


Saint Pygmalion

by foux_dogue



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fashion & Models, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, But it’s not all heavy, Designer Claude, Homophobia, M/M, Model Lorenz, Racism, Sexual Content, There’s some bumbling romance too, Xenophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-03
Updated: 2020-02-17
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:01:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 29,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22550653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foux_dogue/pseuds/foux_dogue
Summary: There was at least something noble about modeling, Lorenz had decided when he’d attended his first casting call. Certainly it sounded more sophisticated than scrubbing toilets. Unfortunately, it hadn’t taken him long to learn that there really wasn’t much distinction between walking a catwalk and playing maid, and both could find you on your knees in a bathroom stall if you weren’t careful.Here’s how he managed it: he swallowed his pride, but never his dignity. It was his principle to never sleep with designers, or agents, or editors, or really-good-friends-of, and so he certainly wasn’t going to sleep with whoever the hell this man was who’d cornered him at yet another middle-society soirée — an overconfident waiter, most likely, although he had the looks to becompetitionif not for his height.Or at least that had been the idea.
Relationships: Lorenz Hellman Gloucester/Claude von Riegan
Comments: 61
Kudos: 208





	1. Limes and Pick-Up Lines

“So, you come here often?”

Lorenz must admit that the pick-up line is marginally clever. For one, he doubts that anyone has ever truly been _here_ before — that is, on the rooftop of this brand-spanking-new ticky-tacky skyrise, just one of Fhirdiad’s countless glass-and-steel phalluses baptized with overindulgent names like _Endeavor_ and _Haven_ and _Maverick_ , as if with a heavy rain they’d suddenly be transformed into battleships instead of simply playing house to trustfund children and recently divorced men who deserved each penny of their alimony owed. Well, he supposes that _somebody’s_ been there before — construction workers, that is — but surely none of them had been so well dressed.

And he must admit that the man is well dressed. _Too_ well-dressed, in fact, and because he’s done nearly the opposite of dressing up. The evening’s elbow-rubbing fiasco ( _networking event_ , Dorothea had instructed him yesterday as she’d penciled it into his calendar; _make some new friends_ ) is filled with girls in too-short dresses and too-tall heels and men in full suits (too-tight, too-new) and yet this man is in his shirt-sleeves. The sleeves in question have been rolled to his elbows. The cuffs are perfectly and symmetrically folded; the collar unbuttoned, tails mostly untucked from his exceptionally-tailored slacks. _I hardly bothered_ , that glimpse of dark chest hair proclaims, just-visible from the final unbuttoned vee of his shirt; _I’m far too important to worry myself with clothes_. Lorenz knows better than to believe him.

“All the time,” Lorenz drawls in response, sipping at his glass and finding as much amusement in the tasteless sparkling water as he does in the thin gold chain strung around the man’s neck. It’s matched to the rings on his fingers — six across both hands and six too many, to be honest — and the one strung through his left ear. Lorenz has met this type before. This man wears it better, at least. No one is going to mistaken him for the desert-prince type he’s so confidently exuding, but at least he’s handsome, in a dark-and-mysterious sort of way.

The man laughs, and grins, and winks.

“I should have guessed,” he replies as he leans against the bar beside him. He’s got a drink as well and it’s transparent, too, but Lorenz can smell the spirit of it even an elbow’s distance away. It’s gotten to that midnight hour when most of the other party-goers are positively hammered. At least the gadfly still has the gumption to stand upright. 

_Make some new friends_ , Dorothea reminds him again as an endless echo in his ear; but she had meant _those-to-know_ when she’d given him the order. Designers, he supposes, but their underlings are even better. Fhirdiad was suffering from a glut of would-be fashion icons, and at least ninety five percent of them have enough money to tag their workshops as _House of something or another_ or, even worse, _Atelier so-and-so_. And all of these heretofore unproven ateliers have premières and business partners and beleaguered cousins playing the part of accountant- _cum_ -casting director, and they all attend these despicable little parties like piranhas tossed into a goldfish bowl.

Which makes Lorenz a goldfish, he supposes, but then that means that this fellow at his left is a snail. After all, the piranhas have a stink to them. Lorenz has attended enough of these parties to recognize it. _Yes_ , he decides as he takes another drink, even though he’s hardly the type to know his way around an aquarium; _a snail_ — a pretty snail, but a snail nonetheless. The point is, the man smells like sandalwood instead of desperation or something even more lowdown, and, to put it simply, that means that he isn’t worth his time. Lorenz does his best to convince himself of this point before he looks sideways and spots Lou Bergliez slipping one of his hands up a giggling girl’s skirt and decides that he really doesn’t have the patience for any more piranhas that evening, either.

“I fucking hate these things,” the man at his side provides aloud. Lorenz quirks one of his brows in agreement but doesn’t allow himself a full twitch of his lips to signal actual commiseration.

“How brave of you to attend nonetheless,” Lorenz quips. Now should be the time for him to bid the man farewell but the bar’s like quicksand, even if he’s been doing nothing more that poaching San Pellegrino and the occasional olive all night. _Make friends_ , Dorothea insists again and Lorenz decides with a rush of confidence that he has enough already, thank you very much.

“You too,” the man returns. He drains his glass. The green curlicue rind of his garnish tangles between a pair of ice cubes as he swirls it in his hand. “Want to get out of here?”

Lorenz laughs. It’s impossible not to, really; the man’s so goddamned earnest with the question, as if he’s delivered the perfect bookend to his stupid opening line. The man’s mouth turns into another easy smile that signals in quick succession that he’s confident and amused and dead-serious.

“Yes,” Lorenz admits, “but why on _earth_ would I leave with you?”

It’s a good question. When Lorenz had run out on his family and the stranglehold of their aspirations he’d found very little waiting for him on the other side. For the first time in his life he’d had to work — and work _hard_ , as it so happened, taking on temp jobs and odd favors just to pay the rent. _Rent_ , that was another thing he’d never really considered before. Rent and utilities and furniture, which apparently didn’t simply manifest itself into a room but required money and a means by which to bring it home, which was difficult when you suddenly found yourself without a car — without a subway pass, even, and very rarely with correct change for the fare.

It was only a matter of time before he’d bowed to his inheritance; not funds, of course, and regrettably, all of those commas and dollar signs having been foresworn when he’d finally mustered the courage to name his father as the bigot that he was — but rather his looks. There was still something upper-class about modeling, he’d convinced himself as he’d attended that first casting call. Certainly it had sounded more sophisticated than scrubbing toilets. Unfortunately, he’d discovered soon after that there really wasn’t much distinction between walking a catwalk and cleaning up shit, and both could find you on your knees in a bathroom stall if you weren’t careful.

Here’s how he managed it: he swallowed his pride, but never his dignity. Humility be damned, he knew that he had the right look for the industry. No doubt he would’ve found himself on a yacht at that very moment instead of simpering along with all of those middling no-nothings if he’d simply jumped into every bed that’d been offered to him, but the absolute last thing he was going to do after running away from his gilded cage was to leap into another one. So instead he suffered through student fashion shows and uninspired spreads for women’s magazines bankrolled by philandering husbands and always gave it his all, even if Dorothea, an old friend turned pro-bono agent when she was feeling in the mood, always chided him for _wasting your goddamned time with all of that Home and Gardens bullshit._

Let’s put it more simply: Lorenz didn’t sleep with designers, and he didn’t sleep with agents, or editors, or really-good-friends-of, and so he certainly wasn’t going to sleep with whoever the hell this man was supposed to be — an overconfident waiter, most likely, although he could’ve been his competition if not for his height.

“Why don’t you find out?”

This is the worst line of them all. Lorenz curls his lip into a sneer and rolls his eyes.

“You’ll have to do better than that,” he tells him as he sets his glass aside.

“I’m open to suggestions,” the man replies. He’s good — has already snatched the jacket from the back of Lorenz’s chair, one sleeve brandished open for him. Lorenz sighs and slips his fingers against the silky lining, shifting on his heel as he drapes on the other shoulder as well. The jacket has nice lines but it’s cheap as hell, really. For some reason Lorenz suddenly feels self-conscious about all of the polyester.

The man cocks his head at the door to the stairs, misinterpreting his retreat as terms of his agreement. For some reason Lorenz follows behind — well, because there’s no other door, chiefly. He ignores the click of the man’s shoes behind him — nice shoes, he notices glumly, well-shined and with those thin laces that scream _very expensive_ — as he twirls down the floors. They should’ve just taken the first door out into the hall and then into an elevator but they don’t. Maybe it’s too late for critical thinking. Lorenz focuses on the smell of paint and fresh-laid carpet.

They’re both out of breath by the time they finally spill into the lobby. The man’s got that wolffish grin of his on his lips again, but Lorenz tidily ignores it. He palms his phone from his pocket and thumbs across the screen. _Four new messages_ , it tells him. He taps on the first.

 _how’s it going, heartbreaker_ , Dorothea asks him. He rolls his eyes again. When did everyone get so chintzy?

“You coming?”

“I hardly think so,” he answers without looking up. He hears the man laugh. It’s like his smile — easy, sweet, no-strings-attached. There’s lots of laughter in this industry, but very little of it is kind. Maybe that’s why Lorenz finally glances in his direction and sees him spinning a set of keys around one of his fingers. There’s a valet tag clipped around the keyring. It’s the most insane thing Lorenz has ever seen. Who _drives_ in Fhirdiad?

What more, it’s just a car; nothing flashy, although it’s well-kept. Leather seats. They smell nice. Lorenz takes a seat at the passenger side and crosses his arms just to be sure that the man knows that he’s not keen on this whole idea. The man laughs again, honey-smooth, benign. He cocks the rearview mirror into his preferred angle before shifting the car into gear. Doesn’t ask for directions. What’s the point?

 _I never do this_ , Lorenz could tell him if it didn’t sound so cheap. He keeps quiet instead. The man clicks on the radio. It’s set to the channel that in daytime hours shares sob-stories about the underprivileged in velvety tones. Now it’s classical music. Handel’s _Agrippina_ — some part from the first half of the opera, Lorenz knows, although he really wished he didn’t. The streetlights peel back discarded in their wake. Lorenz swears to God that he can hear the man’s heart’s steady beating in between the radio’s waltzing sighs.

Maybe none of this is real. Maybe someone slipped something in his drink. The man steps out of his shoes at his doorstep and leaves them neatly next to the mat. They’re nice fucking shoes, but the apartment’s small and old and in a worse part of town than where they’ve come from. It doesn’t really make sense. It must be his, though, because it smells like him: vetiver, pepper, smoke.

Lorenz expects him to ask him if he wants a drink — his lines have been so predictable, why stop now? — but the man just kisses him instead. He tastes like gin in one breath and tonic in the next. _I never do this_ , Lorenz thinks again as he helps him unzip the stubborn plastic zipper on his jacket. It catches twice. The second time the man laughs into his mouth. Lorenz decides to unbutton his slacks himself. It’ll show him, he thinks. He’s not sure why, exactly, but he starts to feel triumphant.

They scramble across the studio’s short wingspan. At least he’s got a bed frame, Lorenz rationalizes to himself— better than a mattress on the floor. It’s short and minimalist, the sort of design that leaves you with bruises on your shins when you aren’t careful. Pretty but impractical. Lorenz sinks his elbows into the bedding and tries not to think too closely about how nicely the words describe himself, too. _I never do this_ , he thinks a third time, the words calm against the gasping of his own voice that’s started to fill the room; but it’s not like it matters. Twenty-odd years of a life well-manicured. He’s done fuck-all of anything else, too.

* * *

Still. He probably should have at least asked the man’s name. This realization washes over Lorenz hours later like a flood. He gasps like he’s in one too, lurching suddenly forward from his pillow as he comes to terms with the fact that the warm glow against his face is the goddamned _sun_. _Morning_. And one spent in what is decidedly not his bed.

Lorenz claps his fingers over his face and pushes them into the sockets of his eyes. If he’d been anyone else he would’ve bemoaned the cruelty of vodka for his misdeeds, but of course he hadn’t had anything to drink for ages, not after he’d made the unilateral decision that it wasn’t good for his skin, or some other nonsense that seemed vaguely scientific. It was also expensive to drink and expensive to pay for his apartment, so these two inevitabilities had fit rather hand-in-hand.

“Shit,” he mutters. It isn’t very becoming. It isn’t very becoming to lounge naked in a stranger’s bed, either. “Shit, shit.” He hunches and waits for an answer, priming himself to suffer through another round of the man’s soft-edged laughter. None comes. The apartment is quiet, filled only with the buzz of traffic outside and the occasional creak of old floorboards. With great hesitation, Lorenz slowly peeks between his fingers to assess the damage he’s done.

The apartment looks more charming in the daylight. It’s still small — smaller than his own, which seems nearly impossible, and more than likely against code — but it’s well appointed. The little kitchen can’t be more than six paces away and half as wide, but it’s neat and uncluttered, dominated by an elaborate espresso machine that looks more like a submarine dashboard than anything domestic. A singular counter forms a bar between the room’s dual purposes, paired with four leather stools that make up the entirely of the apartment’s seating.

The rest of the space is nearly swallowed up by a bookshelf packed to the seams with curios and books that appear to be strategically arranged. Everything has the shine of something expensive. It’s utterly perplexing — as if the man had made his bed out of the storage room of some antiquities museum. Lorenz isn’t sure if he should be impressed or concerned. Maybe he’s some sort of cat burglar. Who the hell knows. After all, he doesn’t even know his goddamned first name. The thought makes his stomach ache.

Perhaps he would’ve wallowed further in his self-inflicted misery if not for the sudden buzz of something against the floor. _Phone_ , a primitive voice inside his head demands as he lurches sideways in the noise’s direction. His cheeks grow hot as he spots his crumpled slacks, his briefs still shoved inside. _Phone!_ , the voice insists as one of the pockets lights up. Lorenz hunches further over the side of the bed and snatches the thing between his fingers, clapping it to the side of his face before he’s even looked properly at the screen.

“Hello?”

“Lorenz?” His gut sinks into his knees as he recognizes Lysithea’s sugar-sweet voice. It sounds nearly sour now. “Finally! I’m outside. Are you sick or something? We’re going to be late! I got a cab and everything. The meter—”

“What do you mean you’re outside?” He’s tired. There’s grit in his eyes, and his mouth’s dry, and his back is more sore than he’d like to admit. The last thing he can manage now is Lysithea’s harping. She senses it as well, her voice turning into a flurry of questioning sounds as he slowly slinks from the bed to peek through the curtains to the street outside. She isn’t there, of course, but that isn’t what’s really important.

“Oh my God, Lorenz. Don’t tell me you forgot. You promised!”

The promise bubbles up in between a set of rather tawdry memories from the night before. Lorenz crushes the bridge of his nose between his fingers in the hopes of tamping them all out. It doesn’t work, at least not for the former. Yes, he had promised her, hadn’t he? Lysithea had dreams of becoming a stylist, God help her, and she’d been begging him to bring her along to one of his go-sees for months. _It’s all about who you know_ , she’d insisted, her cheeks puffed with determination. _She’s right_ , Dorothea had agreed; _be a pal_.

He wasn’t certain just what a _pal_ did, anyways, but what had happened was as follows: Dorothea had snatched his phone from him from across their shared dinner table and had tabbed through his calendar until she’d found a purple-squared appointment that left her satisfied. _Hilda Goneril_ , she’d then proclaimed after she’d amended the appointment title to read _“Meet with CVR - Lys!!”_.

_She’s a genius, and I hear she’s super nice. Lorrie’s going to meet with her next Tuesday. It’ll be perfect!_

_Meet with CVR - Lys!!_ , his phone proclaims in that very moment as he peels it back from his cheek. And the trouble is, of course, that in any other circumstance he would simply call the whole thing off. It would be a shame, naturally. Atelier CVR (stylized _cvr_ in publication, of course, as to appear appropriately contrived) had already garnered some buzz in the proper channels, and it was still new enough to be in need of a proper roster. Still, if Lorenz knows one thing well, it’s that all actions have consequences. Being a goddamned harlot was not somehow immune. However. This action of his had also stranded him in some unknown location, and the streets outside have that frosty look to them that tell him that it’s properly cold outside, and Lysithea’d already made the mistake of mentioning that she’s in a car.

“Look,” he manages finally. “Lys. I’m going to drop you an address. Would you mind picking me up?

“Oh. My. _God_ ,” she breathes, her voice crackling over the receiver. Lorenz scrunches his eyes tight and wishes briefly to disappear. “Lorenz. Don’t tell me that you—”

“Can you please just come? We’re going to be late.”

“And whose fault is that?”

“Please,” he tries a second time as he pads around the edge of the bed. He hears her sigh — less from concern about his wellbeing, he’s sure, but rather his reluctance to share any despicable details. As if he’d ever do _that_.

“Fine. Send me the address. But you better not make me wait when I get there!”

“Yes, of course. Thank you, Lysithea,” Lorenz replies, even though he’s still technically the one offering the favor. Better that he doesn’t remind her, he thinks. She makes an affirmative sound on the other end of the line and hangs up. True to his word, he drops the address to her — his stomach sinking slightly first as he realizes that he’s in a warehouse district, and not the sort that’s named that only _after_ it’s been gentrified.

 _OMG_ , Lysithea texts upon receipt. Lorenz ignores it and instead crouches to hunt his clothes from the floor.

 _LOR_ , his phone insists as he tries to smooth the wrinkles from his shirt. _Ur gonna get stabbed!_ It would be preferable to _this_ , he thinks as he eyes himself in the mirror hung from the back of the nearby bathroom door. If Lysithea wasn’t fully convinced of what he’d done the night before, his clothes would certainly confirm it for her. His shirt was a mess, firstly — missing a button on top of the wrinkles, and perhaps he remembers the pop of it as it’d been torn free — and that says nothing about his slacks, crinkled as they are in waves down the length of the legs. Somehow they’d also managed to pull the zipper of his jacket crooked from its track, and quite frankly he has no idea where his socks have gone.

_lol omg i’m speechless_

_at least u r close to the studio_ , Lysithea offers as he washes his face and does his best to comb his fingers through his hair. The bathroom has a generous assortment of accoutrements, of course — including a straight razor and a shaving brush, as if he’s stumbled into some Wild West salon — but he’s hardly going to share a comb with a man he can’t even name. He does his best not to fixate on how ironic this is, considering the agenda of their night spent together only a few hours before.

It’s not like it’s _his_ fault, he decides as he returns into the main room. He had just been minding his own business until that man had arrived. He must have been some sort of hypnotist, cat burglary aside. A grumbling stormcloud gathers in Lorenz’s chest as he paces past the closet. It breaks into sunny vindication as a sudden idea sparks alight in his head.

“Tit for tat,” he says aloud as he draws the closet doors open, although he’s not sure who it is, exactly, he’s talking to. He finds a neat file of shirts and slacks inside. They’re all, regrettably, spectacular. What’s worse is that they’re all missing labels, which means that they’re _bespoke_. This is a bit of a problem, of course, because whereas Lorenz is tall and willowy, the man was — _is_ — decidedly not. A quick image of his broad chest flickers in Lorenz’s mind before he quickly shelves it away. (Asinine). Still, wide shoulders or not, a clean, well-pressed shirt is better than what he’s got to offer. He chooses one made from chambray and a pair of coal-colored trousers that can tolerate being cuffed. Lorenz makes it work, because of course he does, he’s a fucking model. Properly top shelf.

His theft (temporary, of course; he’ll send them back dry cleaned — it seems only fair) leaves him feeling downright victorious until he rounds onto the front door and finds a little card taped there for him to find. A penned hand reads as follows in between a few embossed lines:

_Early morning. Sorry about that. Would love to see you again — give me a call._

_Think about it?_

_Claude_

Lorenz huffs. _Claude_. What a ridiculous name. It’s almost as bad as his own. He pockets the business card and shoves his way through the door before he can give any of that whole mess a second thought. The landing outside is cramped — of course it is — and the stairwell is tight — naturally. Someone’s smoking at the outside door and seems positively unimpressed by his scowl. He dashes forward to the curb and hugs his arms, the polyester of his jacket offering nothing against the chill. For a moment he wonders if Lysithea isn’t coming after all. A new wave of gloom descends upon him. _Gonna get stabbed_ , her text-voice teases as he stares at passerbys from the corner of his eye. He isn’t too proud to admit that he breathes a sigh of relief when a cab finally materializes nearby.

“Oh my God,” Lysithea offers once again as he sidles his way beside her. “I had no idea.”

“No idea about what?” Lorenz offers her the question thinly as the cab lurches forward towards their final destination.

“That you were a slut.”

“Honestly,” he tuts in reply. “Who taught you to speak like that?” Lysithea laughs, leaning sideways to pat at his tousled hair. She is, like always, an impossible combination of charming and downright devilish, like one of those child-like vampires from some overworked gothic drama. At nineteen _precocious_ is another word for her, but there’s a lot familiar in her, too. She was once a runaway who Dorothea had taken under her wing, after all, and Lorenz knew all about running away from home.

“Let’s not talk about it, shall we?”

“Absolutely not,” she retorts, bracing against her seatbelt. “Let’s _only_ talk about it. Was it somebody from that party?”

“No,” he lies, leaning against the door and doing his best to count the trash cans whizzing by.

“Yeah, right,” Lysithea wagers. “Were they cute?”

“No.” She laughs. Lorenz realizes that this newest assertion might not be in his favor. He sighs and shakes his head. “Not cute. Handsome, I suppose. It doesn’t matter. It certainly won’t happen again.”

“What? And here I was thinking that you’d send them a fruit basket and an invitation for Sunday tea,” she teases. Lorenz briefly considers rolling down the window and leaping out. “Was it really that bad?”

His cheeks feel sunburned. No, it wasn’t bad. It was brilliant. Mind-blowing. His romantic escapades until that point had been a series of disappointments varying only in the severity of their degree, and yet this most recent rendezvous — and a long and enduring rendezvous, it should be said, which was something that he’d always attributed to smutty novels and nothing more — had been entirely different. This he cannot possibly admit aloud; not to anyone, not under penalty of death, and certainly not to Lysithea.

“Let’s not talk about it,” he reaffirms, turning tighter against the door.

“Aww, Lorrie,” Lysithea sighs, this time sounding more earnest. “You’re always too hard on yourself.”

The taxi slows before he has a chance to reply. Lorenz pays their fare (not to any protest, although he supposes that he deserves it) and slinks onto the sidewalk. Lysithea had been right — the atelier wasn’t far from where he’d come. It might have even been quicker to walk, considering the traffic — but, then again, he hadn’t been terribly eager to make his walk of shame so literal. Lysithea grins, apparently sharing the same thought as she walks boldly to the glittering panes of the front door.

The space inside is utterly botanical. Lorenz can’t help but be taken aback by the harsh contrast of all of that lushness against the concrete brutalism of the streets outside. He and Lysithea both gape wordlessly at the prehistoric-looking flora filling the airy room, interspersed with long racks neatly stacked with clothes. Clothes isn’t the right word, really; they’re clouds and steam and all things ethereal bewitched into gossamer sleeves and silks and skirts. Then, on another rack, smoke and coal transmogrified into suits and other masculine shapes. Some are finished, some are still pieced together with silvery pins, but altogether they are fantastical in the most unexpectedly understated way. For the second time that day Lorenz wonders briefly if he’s stumbled into the storehouse of some hallowed place.

He also realizes that he is quite obviously late. A blonde doe of a woman minces past them, dressed in the sapphire churn of an ocean wave-by-way-of-a gown. She shoots Lorenz a poisonous look as she saunters back the way she’d come. Lorenz is used to those looks, but he still shrinks slightly as a woman’s voice cries out “Get out of the way!”

He herds Lysithea to the side as someone dashes forward to greet them. She’s got a head full of shocking pink hair with eyes to match and a pastel jumpsuit to complete the ensemble. All of it is, quite honestly, a bit too bright for his still-drowsy mind to properly register.

“Are you here for the casting call?” She frowns at his crumpled jacket with the question. Lorenz briefly considers ritualistic suicide.

“Yes,” he manages. Lysithea bristles at his side, apparently unsure if she should be embarrassed or excited. The rose-haired woman eyes his empty hands just as he realizes that he’s left his portfolio behind. Well, that isn’t exactly the right term for it, but here he is, all the same.

“Fantastic,” she drawls. “Well. Give me your jacket. Marianne down there,” she waves at a blue shape trapped between a set of racks, “will take your measurements and will give you something to wear.”

“Thank you very much,” he says as he complies. For some reason Lysithea snatches his jacket before he can hand it over. He realizes that he should probably introduce her as well, but something tells him that he’s not in the place to do much of that at all.

“My name is Lorenz Gloucester,” he manages instead. The woman’s eyes are steadied on his collar. She looks a bit confused. He fights the urge to sigh and admit that his parents had been a bit too creative with his name. _Michael_ would have been easier to live with, to be sure. One can only imagine his grade-school trauma. 

“Hilda,” she replies distractedly. Lysithea makes an excited squeak and grips at Lorenz’s arm.

“Hilda!” She’s got an echo, apparently. It sounds suspiciously like a man. For some reason all of the blood in Lorenz’s veins turns to liquid nitrogen. “Is that the last of them?”

“No,” she replies over her shoulder as she finally breaks her gaze. “One more’s just arrived. Male.”

“Oh, good,” her echo offers, accompanied by the patter of a quick step against the floor. Lorenz is suddenly transported to a never-ending stairwell that’s just been painted — _clack, clack, clack_. The shoulders of his stolen shirt feel as though they’re made of lead.

“Lorenz Gloucester,” she supplies for him as the man appears from behind a hulking bird of paradise. He’s got eyes the color of the leaves. It’s good that Hilda’s made the introduction. Lorenz’s tongue’s turned so dry that it’s stuck to the roof of his mouth. It was the eyes, he decides in that moment — those goddamned eyes had been what’d done him in, as green as the limes that’d freshened the man’s drinks the night before.

“He doesn’t have a portfolio,” Hilda continues wryly.

“That’s alright,” Claude says. He’s got his fingers fanned over his mouth but Lorenz can hear his grin in his voice. It roots his feet to the ground, as desperate as he is to run away. “Look at him. It’s perfect. He looks amazing in my clothes.”   
  



	2. Lucky Desperate

“Ninety,” Claude says.

“Ninety,” Marianne echoes, her voice nearly swallowed up by the scratch of her pen. Claude cinches the tape measure around Lorenz’s waist. He’s near enough for Lorenz to notice that he’s wearing a different scent from the last time they were so close. It’s bright and citrusy — bergamot, clove. The nape of Lorenz’s neck tingles. He hasn’t showered in two days. If anything he probably smells like last night’s cologne, which he doesn’t wear, which means it’s not his own.

“Thirty-one.”

“Thirty-one.”

Claude’s fingers are quick and deliberate. He’s got the tape measure coiled in his palm like a snake. It darts out obediently, winding around Lorenz’s arms, his shoulders, fingertips-to-cuffs. For a quick moment it unfurls along his inseam and Lorenz is quite positive that he’s about to die.

“Eighty-one,”

“Eighty-one.”

It’s only a second before Claude’s off his knees. Lorenz takes the moment to swallow. Then he’s got a pair of green eyes staring at him again, sizing him up like he’s the world’s easiest thing to read.

“What are you — six one?”

“Six two,” Lorenz corrects primly. Claude grins. It’s easy; lopsided. Apparently everything comes easy for him.

“I’ll take your word for it.” Claude glances over his shoulder. “One eighty-eight,” he adds.

“One eighty-eight.”

“Great,” Claude then announces. His voice is light and cheery. He pockets the tape measure and plucks a long pin from the little pincushion strapped at his left wrist. He pinches it between the corner of his mouth and looks to Marianne again. “Make a file for him, would you? And let Ignatz know that we need to take some quick shots. After lunch. No rush.”

“Alright, Claude,” she answers, her reply more a figment than a sound. He gives her a goodnatured wave as she disappears behind a row of potted Areca palms before he turns again and pinches together the seam under Lorenz’s right arm.

 _What are you doing_ , Lorenz should ask. He doesn’t, probably because he’s really the one who should be answering that sort of question. Instead he simply watches bewildered as Claude begins to tack in the oversized drape of his shirt. He steps back twice as he works, squinting one eye closed like a painter admiring the proportions of his magnum opus. His lips still have a curve to them — a cat slurping down cream.

“You look pleased with yourself,” Lorenz manages finally. He says it quietly enough that he nearly topples Marianne from her position as the World’s Most Under-Spoken. Claude laughs. He’s loud.

“Sure,” he says. He slips another pin through chambray. “Pleasantly surprised, maybe. I had a feeling that you were the type who’d never call.” Lorenz frowns. That stupid little business card is burning a hole through his pocket. “I like to be surprised.”

‘Yes, well — well done, then,” Lorenz mutters. Claude laughs again. This time it’s lower, like it’s something for just them to share.

“You don’t have to look so miserable,” he offers. He gives Lorenz’s shirt a little tug as he eyes the symmetry of the hem.

“I am _not_ miserable,” Lorenz contends. His voice is haughtier than he’d intended, but it’s not like he’s in the position to be so terribly well-composed. “However, I don’t like to be manipulated.” One of Claude’s dark brows rises.

“Manipulated?’

“I know how this game is played,” Lorenz continues, forcing the quiver from his tone and turning it icy. “And you should know upfront that I’m not going to play along.”

“Hm,” Claude says. He smooths a wrinkle from where the shirt’d once been tucked. He’s infuriating, Lorenz decides. “Do you want to go to lunch?”

“No,” Lorenz sputters.

Claude laughs for a third time. Then he turns and shucks the pincushion from his wrist. “Take off your shirt, would you?”

 _Absolutely not_ , Lorenz wants so desperately to say, and yet he doesn’t; firstly because it is, of course, not really _his_ shirt; and secondly because it is at least the sort of thing that one generally does in scenarios like these; and thirdly because the thing is full of pins. Still, he huffs to voice his discontentment as he carefully peels it off. Claude’s already got another one ready for him by the time he’s shoved it in his direction.

It’s a sweater — soft-knit, camel-colored with an oversized cowl. The color looks nice against his hair. It’ll no doubt be a respite from the cavernous room’s chill. Lorenz knows better than to admit either of these things aloud. Instead he pulls it over his head and watches glumly as Claude takes the double-stolen shirt to a nearby table.

“What are you doing?” Finally he can contain the question no longer.

“I’m getting my coat,” says Claude, and so he is. It’s a stern looking black number. Two arms later he’s looking like the world’s most dashing supervillain. Lorenz decides not to pay attention.

“That isn’t what I meant. And just what is it that you _do_ here, for that matter?” Hilda hadn’t been very generous with their introductions. _So you know each other_ , that’s what she’d said when Claude had first deigned to make his entrance before they’d expedited Lorenz’s audition. Not that Lorenz had been entirely committed to auditioning at all — not that he’d had the chance to even truly _consider_ it. It was all just a whirlwind. He was getting tired of whirlwinds, as far as this green-eyed devil was concerned.

The man laughs. Of course he does. What else is new.

“I gave you my business card,” he suggests as he plucks another coat from a rack hedged in between a pair of glossy ferns. “You’ll hurt my feelings if you just threw it away.”

“This isn’t mine,” Lorenz contends. Claude still offers him the coat. It’s very nice, unsurprisingly. And, unsurprisingly, it’s a stupid thing to say, too; they are both well acquainted with that broken-zippered thing that’d disappeared with Lysithea forty-five minutes earlier. Claude’s grin softens into what Lorenz supposes is a smile. He snatches defeatedly at the coat but doesn’t bother to put it on.

This doesn’t deter Claude — from what, that is, Lorenz isn’t so sure. Still, he’s turned his back to him and that means that Lorenz can finally take a look at that goddamned business card. He does so surreptitiously, as if he needs to convince himself that he’s really just looking for his keys. _Early morning. Sorry about that_ says one side, and already Lorenz is in the process of rolling his eyes. There are two numbers printed below the message. One’s embossed into the card stock —thick and linen-colored — and the second’s been added at a slanted angle in ballpoint pen. He turns the card.

 _Claude Riegan_ , it reads at the top left corner. Below that,

_Founder & Creative Director_

There’re three letters centered in the airy space below that: _cvr._ They sink into his stomach like an anchor.

“You’ve got to be joking,” Lorenz breathes.

“You’re leaving already?” Hilda interrupts, her voice sardonic perfection. Claude shrugs and offers her a sunny smile.

“No one does good work on an empty stomach,” he insists. “I left something at table seven. Would you mind taking a look?”

“Sure, sure.” She waves him off, apparently quite used to this sort of thing. For some insane reason Lorenz find himself following after him. The last thing he sees before he steps through the door is Lysithea peeking over Hilda’s shoulder at him. She looks like she’s just won the lottery, if the lottery were anything nearly as devious as that glint in her eyes.

 _You’ve got to be joking_ , he thinks.

* * *

It’s dark by the time he finally makes it home. Lorenz feels as though he’s been smashed beneath a rolling pin and hung out to dry. His apartment should be as gloomy as the night outside but it isn’t, he discovers as he swings open the door; the lights are on and there’s music playing, and in that instant he deeply regrets the massive mistake he’s made by giving Dorothea a key. 

“Lorrie!” He stands stiffly at the center of her ringed arms as she corners him into an embrace. She’s already laughing. He can feel her giggles knocking against his temples like pebbles against a windowpane.

“Hello, Dorothea,” he manages, his voice sandpaper and a million other dry things. This just makes her laugh harder.

“Ooh,” she says, rubbing her hands over his shoulders and down his arms. “This is so nice. Is it angora?”

“I don’t know.” That damned sweater. Somehow he’d managed to shove his borrowed coat back into Claude’s possession after their very extended lunch ( _working lunch_ , he’d promised, as if that meant goddamned anything) but the sweater had been a different story, and that says nothing about the bounty of the bag slung over his arm. He drops it into one of the chairs ringing his kitchen table and melts into another one himself.

“You’re so pretty,” Dorothea tells him, which he knows quite well truly means _oh, my dear, you’re so dumb_. He shuts his eyes and focuses on his endless etiquette lessons, deciding that _table manners_ probably means stopping himself from snapping some sort of obscenity at her, and no matter how much she deserves it.

“I wish you would have told me,” he grumbles at her instead. She plants her palms against her hips to show that she doesn’t appreciate his tone.

“What are you talking about?”

“You should have told me that CVR’s director was going to be at that party. You _knew_ that I was meeting with them today.” Dorothea coils a strand of hair around her finger. He wagers she’d rather be winding it around his throat, but quite honestly he’s of a similar state of mind.

“Well,” she huffs, “I could _also_ tell you that I had to pull quite a few strings to get you into that party at all, but since you’re going to be _nasty_.”

Lorenz shoves his elbow against the table and buries his chin in his palm, mashing his fingers against his cheek as he stares her down. She matches his gaze. He feels like he’s taunting a bull. Like all matadors, he’s probably more than a little bit stupid to try it.

“Dorothea,” he contends. Her scowl flickers into a grin.

“And it’s not like I thought you were going to _sleep_ with him. What happened to all of your little rules?”

Lorenz slides further into the press of his palm. His smashed cheek mushes one of his eyes closed. He wishes he could close the other one as well and just trick her into thinking he’s fallen asleep. It’s not like it would be a bad idea. He’d hardly slept the night before.

“You’ve spoken with Lysithea,” he observes. His voiced is tortured, just like it should be. She laughs and dances forward to take a seat at the table.

“I’ve spoken with Lysithea,” she agrees, loading each word with theatrical pomp. “Oh my _God_ , Lorrie. She said he couldn’t keep his eyes off you. You saucy little _minx_.”

“Dorothea,” he groans. She leans sideways in her chair to fish through his bag.

“What’s this?” She unfurls the shirt from inside, turning the heather-colored fabric underneath the ugly mid-century ceiling light.

“A shirt,” Lorenz mumbles. Once it had been Claude’s shirt, before Lorenz had stolen it. _It looks better on you_ , the man had insisted as he’d presented it as some sort of parting gift. He’d tailored in the sides so that they kept a cozy fit without swallowing him up outright. For some insane reason Dorothea holds it up to her nose and takes in a deep breath.

“Mm,” she says, her eyes glittering over the collar, “he smells good.”

“Give me that,” Lorenz snarks. He snatches the shirt and smooths it across his lap. “Honestly. Do you have no self control?”

“Funny of you to ask.” She laughs at his newest horrified look. “Listen. Don’t sweat it. What does it matter? He wants you for the show, right?”

Yes. Of course he did. That isn’t the problem. Lorenz leans back in his seat and crosses his arms and tries to will a raincloud to form over Dorothea’s perfectly charming head.

“I’m not doing it.”

‘What?” She slaps her hands against the table. It’s too much. He rolls his eyes. “You’re crazy. It’s Fashion Week! _Fashion Week_ Fashion Week,” she quickly corrects, wagging a finger at him. “Not _Fashion Week Junior Stars of the Food Court_ , Lorenz. I heard that they’re going to get a Saturday slot, too.”

“And where did you hear that?” His voice is deadpan, but she rightly interprets his words as a question.

“Don’t worry about that. I know things. That’s why you like me, right?” She winks. Why is everyone always winking at him? Is it something in the air? “Word is, all of those old bats are crawling over each other to suck CVR’s dick.”

 _Old bats_. He knows who she means, of course — those diamond-wearing octogenarians in too-large sunglasses who own every fashion magazine and editorial worth reading, and most of the ones that aren’t. Dorothea could have managed a more genteel explanation, but at least she doesn’t amend the exposition to add anything about him getting there first.

“Good for him,” Lorenz says, even though she didn’t really mention _him_ , now did she? She offers another sharp-toothed grin.

“So,” she drawls slowly, and with all of the charm of a playground taunt, “what’s he like? Mysterious?”

 _Yes_ — like that hint of an accent he keeps well hidden; and the treasure trove of his apartment; a sweet and sometimes wicked grin.

“No,” Lorenz says.

“Handsome?”

“Marginally,” he answers, having learned his lesson from his conversation with Lysithea.

“Ahuh,” Dorothea retorts slyly. She rises slightly from her seat to hunt her phone from her back pocket. He signals his confusion with a crinkle of his brow. She doesn’t pay attention. Her burgundy-lacquered fingers flash across the screen.

“Liar,” she then drawls, grinning again as she waves her phone at him. “He’s _gorgeous_. Good for you.”

Claude-in-miniature is staring back at him from the header of an article written in a posh font. Lorenz grabs the phone — not because he’s curious, naturally, but rather that he doesn’t want her looking at it anymore, knowing that it will just inspire some kind of contrived evidence of his loose morals.

Dorothea must have been right about the old bats. It’s a flattering picture of him. Claude’s working over a table, his shoulders tilted at an angle that says _look how terribly busy I am_. A strand of his hair has fallen rakishly over one eye. Lorenz would’ve suspected that some photographer’s assistant had carefully combed it there if not for his personal observation of that very same phenomenon. His own hair requires a special diet of expensive shampoos and multi-step conditioners and even then all it does is lay limply at his shoulders; but Claude’s coif has achieved transcendence in that it’s always artfully mussed, and Lorenz gets the feeling that he’s the type who leaves his apartment in the morning when it’s still shower-wet. Not that it’s unintentional. Everything seems intentional with him. Lorenz draws in a deep sigh.

 _In with the New_ , the article heralds. Lorenz skims the first paragraph. It’s a celebration of Claude’s age — twenty-seven, apparently, which gives him a four-year seniority that makes a competitive spark kindle in Lorenz’s chest — and the accolades he’s already hoarded, and the novelty of his staff. There’s Hilda hamming for the camera and covered in an aristocrat’s worth of jewels from a recent show. Like Claude, Lorenz learns from paragraph three, she’s classically untrained, although she’s got slightly more credibility since she at least bothered to drop out of fashion school instead of forswearing attendance altogether.

Lorenz scrolls and finds a group picture of the full studio next. There’s blue Marianne (première _number two_ to Hilda’s première _number one_ , as he’s learned firsthand) standing next to the photographer Lorenz met that afternoon — Ignatz, he thinks — who also doubles as a draftsman. They’re joined by a motley assembly of seamstresses and tailors. The article takes great pains in reminding him that this is unusual; it’s not the standard collection of prim, bun-wearing middle-aged women one would expect from a respected atelier, after all. Of course, Lorenz isn’t surprised. Nothing about Claude seems to be expected, not even when he’s relying on trite pick-up lines.

This thought swings too dangerously close to a memory of the night before. Lorenz quickly slides his thumb against the screen and clears his throat. The article bounces at the bottom, having been fully unfurled. There’s a comment section there. _Lol_ , the first one reads; _is the theme for fashion week this year ‘a trip to the zoo’?_

Lorenz’s clicks the screen black and sets it facedown against the tabletop. It’s quick, like a wince against a fist suddenly swung at his face.

“You’re overthinking this,” Dorothea interjects. Lorenz grinds his molars together and tries to categorize all of the reasons why he isn’t overthinking at all. “This could be huge for you. There’s going to be tons of coverage. I know you don’t want to do any more ads for antidepressants, Lorenz. Come on.”

 _First of all_ , a tiny voice inside his head corrects her, _they were sleeping pills_. She’s probably trying to contend that all of the pharmaceutical fine print had effectively covered his face, which had made it all seem like a wasted effort, but that isn’t the important part, at least not to him.

“I’m not some two-bit whore,” he argues hotly. She rolls her eyes.

“God. Nobody says _two-bit whore_. Stop being such a debutante. Besides, whores generally sleep with people for money, not for more work. You’ve got a terrible business model.”

“I’m not going to do the show.”

“Fine.” She crosses her arms to match his. “You’re not going to do the show. You’re just going to wear a piece of it around and pretend like nobody notices.” Lorenz would rip the sweater from his shoulders if it wasn’t so insufferably warm. Instead he huffs a nasty little noise and stands from his seat.

“I’m going to take a shower,” he announces to the nearby wall. For a moment the room is filled with lightning-hot tension. Then he looks to the window and sees that it’s snowing and sighs. “You can sleep on the couch,” he adds, nearly a whisper, “if you want.”

“Thanks, Lorrie,” Dorothea replies. Her voice is warm and missing any sign of apparent surprise. “I’ll make you something to eat.” He doesn’t answer, but it’s not like that matters.

The bathroom quickly fills with steam. He’s glad it does. He doesn’t really want to worry over his own reflection. Instead he draws back the thin plastic of his uninspired shower curtain and steps inside. The apartment doesn’t have a doorman or dependable air conditioning and it always smells like garlic, for some godforsaken reason, but it’s got great water pressure. He turns the knob closer to hot and tries to focus on nothing at all.

It doesn’t work. It never does. His mind always wanders in moments like these. _Try being mindful_ , his therapist had once suggested, back when he’d still had the cash to pay her bills; _focus on your breathing_. He thinks about getting fucked by Claude instead. _That isn’t what I said to do_ , his invisible therapist chides him.

So he thinks about a stable. He shouldn’t be surprised that his mind wanders backwards that way. It’s all connected by the same lustful string. He tips his head back far enough that the water pools in the bowls of his eyes and he remembers what it felt like on that unremarkable summer day; it was hot. Dry. The stables were filled with flies. It smelled like horse shit and hay. At thirteen he was already too tall for riding, or at least the type of riding that his father would have preferred; that is to say, competitive. At least he had good form.

Ferdinand hadn’t hit his growth spurt just quite yet. At that point they still wonder if he just might become a proper jockey. He was a late bloomer. This would become a constant of his, just like his regular reappearances in Lorenz’s life. In this moment in particular he was still short, still had a little boyish fat in his cheeks and along his jawline. He’d been upset with Lorenz that day, because Lorenz had bested him in their afternoon jumping. Lorenz liked it when he got upset — the way his cheeks turned pink and how he pouted, and how he gathered all of his gumption to whisper a rare curse word, and blanched, mortified, after he’d done it.

At first Lorenz’d thought he’d liked all of these things because it was fun to win. Something had happened to him on his thirteenth birthday, however, that had convinced him otherwise. It had been unseen to anyone else but him, but it was no doubt monumental, like a tadpole growing legs overnight in his science class’ little blue-and-purple-pebbled fishbowl.

Thirteen seemed to him to be an auspicious age, so it’d made sense to him that he’d suddenly become wiser. He’d wondered if Ferdinand was wiser, too, and something in the way that the boy’s auburn hair had stuck to his sweaty brow had encouraged Lorenz to test the theory that very afternoon. He’d taken off his riding helmet and set it aside, and then he’d stepped forward like he’d stepped a million times before, and only then had he done something so fundamentally different that it had made his heart stop and then start again to beat at three hundred miles per hour; he’d kissed him.

At first he’d thought he was lucky. Ferdinand had turned an even more delightful shade of pink, and then he’d sputtered something incomprehensible before he screwed his eyes shut with determination and leaned forward for another sloppy round.A half-second later something had ripped backwards at Lorenz’s collar, however, and that was when he’d realized that somehow his father had seen them. It had been confusing. In the chaos of everything — Ferdinand’s surprised cry, the drag of his heels against the clay of the ring as his father wrenched him behind him; the snort and huff of the horses as they watched, nervous, from their stalls — what had been most confusing was why he was there at all. His father never came to watch Lorenz ride. On any other day he might have thought that he was lucky.

“Stop it,” he’d been stupid enough to croak. He’d made a worse decision by switching at his father’s arm with the riding crop he’d still been gripping. He’d known better than to do something like that, but in moments like those one’s brain tended to abandon the luxuries of patience and clear-thinking.

To his credit, his father had stopped — but it had only been to turn and snatch the crop from his son, his face drawn into a purpled fury he’d never seen before. Then he’d wound back his arm and Lorenz had prepared himself for a quick snap against the shoulder or along the broadside of his thigh, like his father had been sometimes known to do when he misbehaved. Instead his father had cracked the crop across his face with enough force to make it clear that he wanted to hurt him.

The thing was, he’d always admired his father. He was always busy and so he’d only been a minor player in his childhood, but Lorenz had understood that busyness was just a side-effect of politics, although he couldn’t quite articulate just what it was his father actually _did_ as a member of such an esteemed institution. Still, in the moments that they’d shared together when he’d been a boy, he’d always been filled with the sunny pride of being his father’s only child; and even better, his only son. Sometimes he even heard him talking about him to his mustachioed peers, and he’d known in a deep part of himself that it was good, the way he was always using words like “good boy” and “bright” and “just like his old man”.

So in that moment, sprawled in the dirt, his hands cupped under his chin to catch the drip of his blood, Lorenz hadn’t been angry, or hurt, or horrified; he’d just been confused. The lead blanket of his dread had only come later, after his kind-hearted riding instructor had driven him to the hospital for a set of stitches to connect the space between his nose and his mouth again (and he’d been lucky that it had scarred along the shape of his philtrum, almost as if it’d never been there at all) — and after his mother had cornered him in the kitchen, her face pale and tortured. At first he’d been relieved. His mother had always been his shield: a soft breast to curl against when the school boys teased him for his name and for his big, intimidating house and the pretty shape of his eyes and his cheekbones, like a girl’s; or a tutting voice when his uncles urged him to take up rougher sports instead of something as preposterous as _dressage_.

After everything, he’d thought. After his father’s terrifying snarl, and the industrial bleakness of the emergency room, and the heavy silence of his car-ride home; after everything, at least _she’d_ give him something kind. His swollen lips had wavered with a cry when he’d first saw her, and he’d watched hers do the same. How lucky he was to at least have _her_.

“Darling,” she’d murmured as she’d drawn him into a hug. She’d stroked his hair and had been quiet for a long, long time. “I think,” she’d told him finally, “that it would be better for you if you just tried to be normal.”

Her whispered recommendation was the kindest version of the cruel things that followed after. In the end, however, it was the worst. The memory of it chased him from home ten years later; ten years too late, really, and enough time for him to perfect that bitter inner monologue that his therapist had always scolded. _Don’t be so unkind to yourself_ , she’d instructed him in her watercolor-papered room, her voice half-swallowed by the raindrops and whale-songs piped in by a nearby stereo; _you wouldn’t say something like that to a friend, would you?_

Maybe she’s right. Maybe they’re all right. Maybe he just isn’t trying hard enough. Maybe he just needs to journal. Maybe he just needs to meditate more. Lorenz kneads a palmful of shampoo into his hair and tries to stop thinking about it. _Mindful_ , he’s supposed to be, not _mired_. He tries to focus on the whitewash of the water. Why should it work this time?

The shower’s rush bends to takes on a man’s voice — low, velveteen. Gin and tonic. He’s an oxymoron. His hands are hot and too-big but they’re gentle and soothing, too. He runs them over every straight-and-curved line of Lorenz’s body. It’s obscene how reverent they are. _God_ , he says, a memory captured in the showerhead: _you’re so perfect; look at you_. Just like his pick-up lines, the words are as trite as they are deliriously earnest.

Lorenz wonders if he’s lucky or if he’s still just a fool.

* * *

The show is in four weeks. The conservatory of Atelier CVR is already packed full of clothes, but somehow Claude and the rest of his retinue are still swallowed up by nervous busywork. Lorenz hears nothing for a full week following his go see, and so he briefly considers that it’s all just been some bizarre fever dream. Then he receives a call the Monday after from an unknown number that turns out to be Marianne. _Can you please come in for a fitting_ , she whispers into the receiver. Maybe if it had been Claude on the other end of the line he would have at least feigned a few rounds of disinterest. Instead he tells her _yes, of course_ , and three hours later he’s shirtless in between two domesticated rosebushes while Hilda holds up fabric swatches against the corner of his jaw. 

“Is yellow too eggy?”

“Er,” he attempts. It’s only taken him thirty minutes to realize that most of what she says is her own private stream-of-consciousness. She scrunches her eyes into slits and doesn’t immediately respond.

“Easter egg,” she manages finally, dreamily. She lets the fabric square flutter to the floor before pulling another one — smoke-grey — from her sleeve. “Too eggy,” she decides, this time with conviction.

Claude circles them like a shark. He darts from one grouping of beautiful models to the next, his staff the little fish nibbling in his wake as he shifts hem lines and whisks away sleeves with the quick flash of his shears. To be honest, Lorenz finds this version of him a little intimidating. He decides it’s because he’s always in some state of undress whenever he’s summoned there to sample the newest version of whatever outfit they’ve picked for him. More likely it’s because Claude in his studio is the Mr. Hyde to the Dr. Jekyll who’s become a common feature on Lorenz’s phone.

 _hey_ , a text colored his signature green jingles when Lorenz is out to dinner two days laterwith the girls. Lysithea giggles and shoots him a very particular look when he cocks the phone sideways to type out his reply. The last thing he wants is for her to see the conversation that’s already come before — long, meandering, day-time, night-time. Claude’s apparently got no self control. Whenever he has a clever thought he sends it forth into the world by way of a text addressed exclusively to him. In these two weeks he’s come to know him, Lorenz has become quite accustomed to waking at three a.m. to a chime and a line like _have you ever eaten kumquats before?_

Sometimes there are pictures, too. It’s important that Lysithea never sees them.

 _hello_ , Lorenz manages beneath the tacky gingham tablecloth.

 _miss you_ , writes Claude. Lorenz fights the urge to groan.

 _that’s preposterous_ , he replies. A warmth gathers in his chest. He knows Claude will find the word funny.

 _you’re preposterous_.

Lorenz laughs into his water glass and ignores Dorothea’s crooked brows.

 _let’s get dinner tomorrow_ , Claude suggests. He sends over a link to some painfully trendy speak-easy sort of situation. Lorenz considers the offer but doesn’t immediately reply. _No_ would be the easiest answer, of course, but they’ve rather graduated from that line. Still, despite the extended encyclopedia of their messaging, _dinner tomorrow_ would be the first time he’s really spent any alone time with Claude since their _lunch this afternoon_. For some reason it seems daunting. Serious. A little unnerving.

 _think about it_ , comes another one of Claude’s replies. Lorenz realizes that the phrase is his version of a bookmark — something that the man uses to reassure him without losing their place. _It’s alright if you don’t want to_ , that’s what _think about it_ means.

 _fine_ , Lorenz types. His thumb hovers over the send button before he taps it away. Even he knows that there’s a limit to his cattishness.

 _dinner tomorrow_ , he sends instead. He likes that it makes it seem like he’s the one with the idea.

 _i’ll pick you up at 7_ , comes Claude’s quick reply.

* * *

“I’m so sorry,” Claude says from inside a voile cloud. CVR’d had an agreement with a smaller studio to embroider the dreamy cloth with a verdant pattern destined for the bodices of a trio of gowns, but in the eleventh hour the studio’s admitted that they don’t have the resources to complete everything in time. There’s nineteen days left until the show and so of course the last thing Lorenz is worried about is their missed dinner. Maybe if he’d paid more attention in home ec he could have even helped, but in the meantime he decides he can at least be civil with him. 

“It’s alright,” Lorenz promises him as Hilda darts in to tuck the cuff of his left sleeve a little shorter.

“Tomorrow,” Claude says. Lorenz isn’t certain just what the hell he thinks he can accomplish in twenty-four hours, but he’s using that honest tone of his, so he believes him.

“Tomorrow,” Lorenz agrees. Hilda shoots Claude a sly little smile but they both seem to be good enough about it to ignore it. That night Claude makes up for it by sending him enough messages to flesh out a respectably-sized novel about how good he looked in that suit. At the time Lorenz had been busy fidgeting across his apartment under the auspices of cleaning up, but the peeping of his phone is enough to finally subdue him. He falls asleep on the couch with a grin on his face, feeling stupid and a little giddy.

 _i’m so sorry_ , is what he wakes up to, along with a crick in his neck. It’s accompanied by a selfie of Claude wearing yesterday’s clothes. He’s frowning (rather theatrically, Lorenz must note) in between the swirls of a thousand yards of glittering voile. Lorenz would tease him — or perhaps even admit that now he’s properly disappointed — if not for the pitiful dark circles under his eyes.

 _friday_ , Claude adds. _i promise._

* * *

_that sounds like a DATE_ , Dorothea texts him when he refuses her invitation out for drinks. Lorenz ignores her — holds a black sweater up against himself before swapping it out for a blue collared shirt instead. Neither of them look particularly striking in the mirror. He allows himself one long-drawn and deeply belabored sigh. 

_it’s not a date_ , he hastily types out before turning to his closet again for option number three. This time his phone cries out with a proper call. It’s Dorothea, of course — he doesn’t even need to turn and look to see her name scrolled across the screen. He waits until the very last cheery chime before he picks up.

“It’s not a date,” he greets her. She laughs through her end of the line.

“Of course it is. Listen, it’s not like it’s some four-letter word.”

“It is in fact a four-letter word,” Lorenz corrects her. He pinches his phone against his shoulder as he leafs through his closet’s offerings. She groans at the joke.

“You know,” she drawls, “even _you’re_ allowed to be happy sometimes.” Her voice is nearly swallowed up by the swell of laughter and a clinking set of glasses. So she’s already started on her weekly bar-crawl. Lorenz nearly feels guilty about abandoning her until he remembers that Dorothea knows everyone in this town — it’s not like she’ll be buying her own drinks, at the very least.

“You should be happy,” she doubles-down. “He’s got a good reputation. You know I’d tell you otherwise.” Lorenz hums, but he supposes she has a point; if there was any nasty gossip about Claude mulling around the usual channels, no doubt she’d have already found it like some miner panning for gold. “Besides, it wouldn’t kill you to be with someone who actually respects what you do.”

Lorenz scowls at his reflection. Even _he_ doesn’t respect what he does. Still, Dorothea might be right — point number two. He doesn’t admit it aloud, of course. He’s always been so stubborn about losing.

“Alright, Dorothea.”

“Just enjoy yourself,” she instructs again. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t.”

“You’ll do anything,” he retorts dryly. She laughs, bright and gleeful.

“Of course I will.” He can hear her winking though the phone when she hangs up.

Lorenz eventually settles on an outfit and dashes out his door just minutes before he’d be considered late. It’s cold out, but at least it isn’t snowing. He winds a scarf around his throat for good measure before turning leftwards from the stoop of his apartment. The speakeasy from before will be too hopelessly crowded for dinner on a Friday night, and so they’ve settled on a nearby seafood restaurant instead. It’s expensive — Lorenz has always wanted to go there, and so he isn’t too proud not to make the subtle suggestion. Claude leaps on it, of course, reporting back that he’s made a reservation before Lorenz even has a chance to have second thoughts about the idea.

When he gives his name to the hostess she gives him a look like she’s been expecting him. Another member of the staff materializes to take his coat. It’s strange, stepping backwards into this old orchestration again. Everyone had known his father’s name, once, too. They’d all offered him the same doe-eyed smiles back then. When he’d been younger it’d just been the standard. He’d thought every boy was treated like a prince. When he’d gotten smarter about it, however, all of those niceties had nearly made his blood boil.

But now. Now, although he feels terrible thinking it, it feels _nice_. It’s nice that somehow Claude has ingratiated himself into the upper strata, and not for some blue-blooded name but because he’s _impressive_. And if Claude’s impressive, and Lorenz is his guest, then that must mean that he’s not so inconsequential either. And maybe it’s egotistical, but it’s been difficult — being inconsequential, on top of everything else. 

_i’m here_ , Lorenz types out as he takes his seat. It’s not a surprise that he’s arrived first. A wave of pity fills his chest as he imagines all of that voile again. Still, it seems like it’s Claude’s own fault, really. What sort of creative director is so hands on? It’s one thing to be familiar with his collection once it’s graduated from his sketchbook, after all, but it’s quite another to prick his fingertips bloody sewing it all together himself.

Oh well.

A waiter swings by to offer him a drink. Lorenz asks for bubbling water and watches him as he disappears. The restaurant is dark and quiet and elegant. Lorenz eyes the nearby set of menus and quietly prays that they have scallops. What he would do for a good scallop — not those rubbery things tossed in with Dorothea’s stir-fry, but soft, buttery clouds plucked fresh from the sea. He’ll kill for a good scallop, he decides. Die for it, even.

Still. It would be rude to plan out his meal before Claude even arrives. He slips out his phone again instead, eyeing his unanswered message before he clicks sideways into a field of cheery icons. It’s mostly muscle memory that opens one up in particular. It manifests into a social media feed dotted with sparkling smiles and pictures of toes buried in the sand. When he ran away from home he’d purged most of his social Rolodex as well, but a few standouts remained. There was something satisfyingly cruel about living vicariously through their outlandish exploits. Lorenz has always been a peculiar breed of self-destructive.

He catches up on Leanna’s recent stint in rehab ( _connecting with nature in Morfis_ , she insists, although she’s fooling no one) and explores an extended photoshoot featuring one of his second cousins’ Pomeranian, Snowball (Snowball is perhaps the only one out of all of them that Lorenz truly misses). He’s about to switch back over to check his messages again when a flash of red hair catches his eye.

It’s Ferdinand, of course. He’s got more freckles than Lorenz remembers. Like the rest of them, it seems as though he’s abandoned Fodlan’s freeze for someplace with white sand and sapphire water. Brigid, Lorenz supposes. He flicks through a trio of pictures: Ferdinand brandishing a drink made out of a pineapple; Ferdinand in a nearly too-small swimsuit flexing goofily next to a pool; Ferdinand with an armful of monkeys yanking at his long hair. All of it is painfully predictable except for the fact that in each he’s accompanied by a pale sliver of a man. In the first this man is cringing in the corner just beneath the prickly edge of Ferdinand’s drink. In the second he’s hidden in the shade of a pool umbrella, wearing black sweatpants and a shirt to match in contrast to Ferdinand’s garish ensemble. By the third he’s finally learned to smile, apparently caught off guard by Ferdinand’s simian popularity.

It’s obvious what he is, of course. And maybe everyone else would have been surprised by Ferdinand finding a companion in what appears to be a grim reaper on vacation, but it’s just so _like_ him; keeping within the confines of their stodgy aristocracy, but only while stoking the fires of the world’s mildest rebellion. Lorenz wonders next what he’s named this newest man. In the past he’s insisted that they’re just assistants, personal trainers — an on-call chef, once, even though everyone knows he’s always been a picky eater. Maybe they all know the truth, of course, but what matters is that they don’t talk about it.

Lorenz allows his lips to tip into a lopsided smile as he scrolls through another set of pictures. The waiter interrupts him to ask if he’d like anything else to drink. Lorenz offers him a friendly rejection before turning to his phone again. He checks his messages once more — no response yet, but certainly one’s coming — before flipping back into Ferdinand’s photos.

He finishes with a long post which finds Ferdinand waxing poetic about discovering oneself through travel (and entirely sincerely, as if he thinks that everyone can afford a month’s long beachside retreat) before advancing into an image that makes his blood run cold. This one features Ferdinand and his unnamed companion again. They’re huddled close together and dimly lit by firelight. Ferdinand’s got the widest smile Lorenz has ever seen. He’s flushed and teary-eyed and gripping at his reaper’s collar tight enough that it looks as though he’s about to topple over. And there, between those white-knuckled fingers, is a little golden ring.

Lorenz laughs under his breath and stares sideways at the nearby bar. The bartender’s looking back at him. It’s in that moment that he realizes that he’s pitying him. _Of course_. He glances down at his phone again, hastily minimizing Ferdinand in all of his bewildered happiness to check on his messages again. It’s been thirty minutes. Thirty minutes is a long time.

Ten years is a long time, too, but at least Ferdinand’s finally learned the trick of it. Sweet old Ferdinand — always a late bloomer, but isn’t there something poetic in the fact that he’s at least finally come out on top?

Lorenz swallows a mouthful of embers as he neatly folds his napkin against the tabletop. Then he drags out his phone again and tabs into his conversation with Claude.

 _did you get my message_ , he begins before quickly blotting it out. His heart starts to beat with a bitter rhythm in his throat.

 _is everything alright?_ He deletes that, too.

 _forget it_ , he dashes out venomously. It’s childish and probably unfair.

 _forget it. we can just reschedule_ , he amends. It makes him sick to read, just as sick as he knows he’ll feel when he gets the inevitable _i’m so sorry_ later whenever Claude bothers to finally pick up his phone. Lorenz presses his thumb. Delete, delete delete, delete.

 _forget it_ , he sends. He stands and shuffles a pair of crisp bills from his wallet to leave behind. It’s the polite thing to do. Maybe he doesn’t always get it right, but he at least always tries to be polite. It’s a constant in his life, he supposes — that and being disappointed.

His phone rings when he’s four paces out the door. Half of him flushes hot with relief, and the other ice-cold with bitter anger. All of that dissipates when he sees Dorothea’s name on the screen. Then he just feels pitiful again. She always seems to have a sixth sense about these sorts of things.

“Hello?” Maybe it would be better for him not to answer, but the honest truth is that he hates being alone, particularly when he’s upset, and even Dorothea drunk-dialing him is better than talking to himself on the short walk home.

“Oh my God,” she answers, her voice too-loud and twice as desperate. “Jesus. Thank God. Are you alright?” _You’re being a bit dramatic_ , he would reply if not for her strange breathlessness. He freezes in place, tilting his face closer to the screen.

“Yes, I’m — what is it? I’m alright. Are you? What’s wrong?”

“Jesus,” she babbles again, this time in the form of a sigh. “I had this terrible feeling that you might be over there. Oh my God, Lorrie. This is crazy.”

“What’s crazy?” He feels like his got a knife slicing up the centerline of his chest. Dorothea might be a bit flighty, but he’s never heard her talk like this before. “Dorothea. What’s going on?”

“You don’t — you don’t know? Where are you?” Lorenz shakes his head, the sudden rapid tempo of his heart rate making it impossible for him to play nicely along.

“Tell me what’s going on,” he insists. 

“Are you not — Oh my God, Lorrie. Listen. Somebody — I think it’s all gone. Somebody burned CVR to the _fucking_ _ground_.”

“ _What_?” He might not say this last part aloud. Or maybe it’s that he shouts it. The only thing that’s clear is that it’s just luck, really, that he doesn’t drop his phone to shatter into a million useless pieces against the uncaring concrete beneath his feet.


	3. The Wax in Your Wings

There’s three subway stops and a bus transfer between Lorenz and the warehouse district. Dorothea meets him at the bus stop, her face all worry over the fringe of her scarf. She greets him with a hug and a cup of coffee that stings his frozen fingers through the cardboard.

“Shit,” she says. It nearly sounds like she’s laughing, but he knows she’s not. They both stare listlessly at the bus schedule for a while, their breath pooling in a fog around their heads. There’s a dozen different questions they should be asking — _have you contacted anyone; is he alright; is it crazy for us to go; is it safe; will we just be in the way_ — but it doesn’t seem as though either of them really has the willpower to say much of anything at all.

Lorenz takes a sip of coffee and burns his tongue; sips again. He hears the rumble of the bus from around the corner. Soon it’s stopped in front of them, sighing as the doors creak open. He and Dorothea step into the green wash inside and hunt out a pair of seats near the back. The bus is full of drunks and bleary-eyed salarymen still dazed from clocking out. No one seems to notice them.

Dorothea tugs off one of her knitted gloves and finds her phone. He watches over her shoulder as she types _fire on 64th street w_ and clicks search. Then she hands it over to him because she knows he’s the type that never hunts out bad news when he’s alone.

 _Breaking News: Inferno in the Warehouse District_ , Dorothea’s phone tells him. Lorenz takes another drink as his eyes skim along the lines. _Residents and business owners in the Warehouse District had a rude awakening late Friday night when a blaze engulfed the twenty-second block of 64th Street West on Third. Emergency crews are on the scene, with some experts already hinting that the fire may be a potential hate crime. No casualties have been reported._

_Once a blighted section of the old industrial heart of Fhirdiad, 64th on Third has seen a recent renaissance as the playground of up-and-coming art and fashion houses like the Monastery and haute couture darling cvr. While many have celebrated the area’s transformation, others have critiqued the district’s largely immigrant business owners as having gentrified a historically significant section of the city for what has been called “wanton hedonism” and “globalist treason” by conservative groups._

_Our journalist at the scene, Bernie Varley, reports the same, saying that “although the twenty-second block is largely unrecognizable in its destruction, there is still evidence of racially-charged epithets graffitied near the epicenter of the fire. While some brass on the scene is hesitant to make the charge, it seems to this reporter that the question of arson seems almost certain.”_

“Shit,” Lorenz echos as he hands Dorothea back her phone. She chews at her lip but doesn’t respond. He stares at a drop of coffee caught in the rim of his lid and lets his mind wander back to the article again, hanging with sticky fingers onto words like _no casualties_ and _destruction_.

“It’s always been like this,” Dorothea rationalizes finally. “I just never thought it would get this bad.”

Lorenz gets stuck in a gesture that’s both a nod and a shrug. Why wouldn’t it get this bad? Parts of him aren’t even surprised. The fire’s just a horrifying bastardization of what he’s already seen firsthand — cruel, three-letter words scratched into the green paint of his high school locker that grow and mutate with each playground taunt until they’re swinging knuckles in a circle, bloodying his nose and leaving him black-eyed until he’s finally tall enough to scare them off. Then it’s worse: whispers that turn into empty seats on either side of him in every lecture hall until Dorothea finally comes to save him, a stranger then but not to those nasty looks he’s garnering. An internship that disappears even despite his father’s connections. Men who look like they want to kill him during the daytime and who’re desperate to fuck him when it’s dark.

“Shit,” one of the two of them says — who knows which — when the bus lurches to a stop. Lorenz can smell smoke before he even steps through the door.

“Lorrie!”

It’s Lysithea. Lorenz shares a look with Dorothea. She’s got the same surprised cock of her brow as if to say, _I don’t know, do you_? Lysithea darts forward to greet them from the bustle of the rubberneckers crowding the street. There’s a young man trailing at her heels. Lorenz thinks he recognizes him from the studio — he looks a little like Claude, to be honest, although he’s far more age appropriate to be staring so forlornly at Lysithea the way he is now.

 _What are you doing here_ , he wants to snap with a rare, paternal fear; but he catches it and swallows it down. It’s as bitter as the coffee.

“Are you alright?” Lorenz asks. Lysithea nods, her lips puckering into a frightened pout.

“Everything is...” she manages before rubbing at her eyes. “Everything’s all fucked up.” The man at her side touches tentatively at her left shoulder. She leans into him and shudders. She’s indignant in the way he’d been once, Lorenz realizes — still naive enough to be furious. He wishes he still had that part of him instead of the useless, jaded misery he’s filled with now.

“Is everyone..?” Dorothea finally takes on the burden of actually doing something. Lysithea nods.

“No one was there,” the young woman informs. “Cyril and I had just left. We were the last ones. Hilda wanted us to help look over the line-up. And I — maybe if we’d just stayed a little longer, we could’ve—”

“Nonsense,” Lorenz intervenes. “Thank goodness that you were already gone.” He should be looking her in the eye as he says this, but he’s glancing through the crowd instead. There’s Hilda and Marianne near the front, pink-and-blue, their heads bowed together and their arms intertwined. He thinks he might see Ignatz in blond as well, although it’s difficult to tell. The fire’s been put out but its still smoking like its full of brimstone. There’s three spotlights pointed at the skeleton of the glass palace that the atelier had once been, and their thankless white glare somehow only makes it harder to see anything at all.

“Over there,” Lysithea offers, as keen as ever. Lorenz follows the point of her finger to make out a duo standing inside the yellow marquee of the caution tape that emergency services has laid out. It’s Claude and someone dressed in a police uniform, Lorenz realizes, the former with his hand at his ear as he apparently plays intermediary with whomever’s on the other line of his phone. Lorenz’s stomach cramps as he realizes somewhere in the chaos of everything falling apart Claude must have seen his stupid, mean-spirited _forget it_. **_Fuck_**. He turns two inches tall as the four of them all glance at each other and wait for some divine intervention regarding just what in the hell they’re supposed to do.

Lorenz certainly doesn’t have the answer. They’re outliers — and not just literally, the way they’re standing apart from the dark mass of gawping onlookers. No matter how many late-night texts he’s shared with Claude, Lorenz isn’t foolish enough to forget the fact that he’s little more than a stranger to the man. Everything Lorenz knows about him he’s learned from magazine articles and internet gossip, after all, other than his name and his preferred cocktail.

What the hell is he doing there? What can he possibly do to help?

So he doesn’t. He doesn’t do anything. He just stands there, his coffee growing cold in his hand, and watches as the crowd slowly disintegrates into the night. He nods goodbye after Cyril convinces Lysithea that she needs to rest, and doesn’t even protest when he notices that they leave together and in a direction that’s decidedly not pointed where her and Dorothea’s shared apartment lies. His eyes linger on a woman wearing a yellow windbreaker as she coils up the wires of the journalists’ menagerie and packs everything away; cringes at the sound of someone’s off-handed laughter when the police start to pair up and peel off. 

At two-thirty in the morning Dorothea hugs him goodbye. _You should really come with me_ , she tells him, but he doesn’t. He feels more foolish than ever now that he’s alone and leaning against a telephone pole, sick from the smoke and still hanging onto his empty coffee cup like it’s a lifesaver. Claude’s been pacing in tight circles since Lorenz first arrived: on his phone, first quiet, and then bristling as he speaks with a grimace into the receiver; later, darting between the slow advance of other business owners who’ve come to look upon the ruin of their livelihoods, all sunken shoulders and shaking heads. He’s running three thousand miles per hour and getting nowhere, and somehow Lorenz is the one who’s left feeling breathless.

It’s funny how everything ends. The ruins cool and suddenly they aren’t so captivating anymore. The last stubborn onlooker gives up and walks away. Dependable as always, the sun rises and its all just grey again — concrete, ash, twisted beams and blackened glass — and they’re the only ones left to see it. Claude’s crouching over a safe that the firefighters managed to haul from the debris. The casual onlooker would think that maybe he’s digging through it, or maybe he’s waiting for it to cool, but Lorenz knows that he hasn’t moved for a long time. He’s just staring, and Lorenz wonders what he’s thinking — if he’s thinking about anything at all.

He pushes off from the telephone pole and finally musters the courage to cross the street. The sound of his footsteps spooks Claude alive again. By the time Lorenz’s made it to his side he’s turned the knob of the safe sideways and has started to search inside. Someone’s brought some cardboard boxes for him — the kind that make Lorenz think of his great-uncle, of all godforsaken things. The man had been a governor. He’d lived in the biggest house Lorenz had ever seen. When he’d died they’d cremated him, and before he’d had the chance to be scooped into a pretty urn the funeral home had given Lorenz’s father his ashes in a cardboard box no bigger than a basketball. Lorenz had loved that. Had found it so fucking funny. It doesn’t seem as funny now.

Claude shuffles some papers into one box and jewelry and petty cash into the other. His hands leave sooty fingerprints on everything he touches. Then he stands and looks at Lorenz — his eyes a green so bright they make him flinch — and asks him, simply, “can you help me carry these home?”

They say nothing to one another as they walk down the block and then the next. The box is light; it isn’t far. Lorenz thinks that he’d keep on walking forever, if it mattered. Instead they round on the crooked stoop of Claude’s apartment and work together up the stairs. Everything inside looks just like he remembers it — neat, pretty, a little strange. It’s dim but Claude doesn’t bother clicking on a light. He doesn’t take off his shoes this time, either. Instead he slides his box onto the kitchen counter and crosses the apartment with four paces to pull a set of books back from his bookshelf. Lorenz puts his box beside its pair and watches as Claude hunts out a pack of cigarettes from a hidden spot at the back of the shelf. Then he turns and shoves the nearby window open with a loud clack, pausing in his trajectory to sit at the edge of his bed only to snatch a flat of matches from the counter first.

Lorenz can smell the fire on the wind. It seems downright nihilistic for Claude to fill his lungs with any more of it.

“I didn’t know that you smoke,” Lorenz says finally. The cigarette crackles and flares. Claude replies with a rueful laugh that takes on a silver shape through his nostrils.

“I don’t.” The cigarette droops between his lips as he drags his fingers through his hair. He’s staring at the sunrise. He looks like he’s six years old and a hundred in the same motion — pitiful and perfect, untouchable, sublime. Lorenz scuffs his toes against his heels to step out of his shoes and pads across the room to sit beside him. He looks at the sunrise, too.

“I’m not using you, you know,” Claude says. For a moment Lorenz’s stomach drops. He wonders if he’s been fired. It seems a bit absurd. Then he realizes that Claude’s really talking to the memory of him pouting in a place that no longer exists; _I don’t like to be manipulated_ , he’d sniffed, all pomp and sniveling pride, as if he’d ever let anyone do anything else to him before. Lorenz feels like he’s taken one of those axes strapped to the side of the fire trucks and buried it deep in his chest.

“I know,” Lorenz admits. He watches a bird take flight from the fire escape across the street before he peeks sideways at Claude’s green eyes. “But it’s alright if you do.”

Claude winces at the suggestion. Then he shakes his head, huffing another grey breath into the air as he crushes the cigarette against the bottom of his shoe.

“That isn’t what this is,” Claude insists.

Lorenz doesn’t know what to do. What could he possibly say? _I’m sorry that the world’s so fucked up. I’m sorry that you did so much for nothing. I’m sorry that it doesn’t get better, really — that it’s all just garbage until the end._ He doesn’t know, so he does what he wants instead. Claude once said he liked surprises, wasn’t that right?

So Lorenz turns against the ball of his foot and kisses him. Claude’s all fire — smells like it, feels like it, tastes like it. It’s as revolting as it is intoxicating, which to Lorenz seems to make sense. An oxymoron. He’s thought of him this way before. At first Claude seems ready to insist on what he’s already half-said — _this isn’t the best time_ , maybe; or maybe, more cringing, _don’t pity me_ — but then his fingers grip at Lorenz’s hips as he shifts to straddle Claude’s own and Lorenz doesn’t find any of that so convincing anymore. Lorenz strips off the cardigan he’d painstakingly settled on hours (centuries) before. Claude watches him through his lashes, his fingers already on the button of Lorenz’s fly.

A wash of white-hot inspiration seizes him as he watches him watching him. Once he’s tossed away the cardigan, Lorenz snatches at Claude’s hand. Then he leans forward and draws his fingers into his mouth, cleaning off the soot with his tongue like whipped cream from a trifle. It tastes chalky and bitter. He wonders if it’ll make him sick. Maybe it’ll be better if it does. A low, wanting sound rumbles in Claude’s chest. It’s a warning to the way he’s already slung his free arm around Lorenz’s waist. He pushes him sideways and then Lorenz is diagonal across the bed, shuddering as Claude peels off his slacks and the briefs beneath.

Claude replays the evening for him as they tumble against the sheets: his anger, manifest in the way he winds Lorenz’s hair around his fist and turns it tight enough that tears bead at the corners of Lorenz’s eyes; the lost eagerness of their doomed dinner with the press of his lips down his throat; and finally the devastation of everything as he holds him close, sweat trapping between their bodies as the bed frame creaks against the floor.

Lorenz wonders if it’s wrong. How much he likes it. How well he sleeps, afterwards, smudged with cinders and stale cigarettes. But God, what does it matter? Who’s really keeping score?

* * *

This time Lorenz wakes before Claude does. The sun’s setting instead of rising. It’s freezing. Lorenz eyes the open window and shivers, inching deeper into the warmth of the duvet and willing the sill to snap closed on its own. Claude sighs in his sleep and tumbles an arm over the rise of his hip. It’s outrageously domestic. Lorenz juggles the ideas of enjoying it or wanting to run away. It’s not like it’s unearned. He’s daydreamed about this sort of thing before, of course, and it’s always ended badly; two-timing and unanswered phone calls and heartbreaking cruelties spelled out in flippant texts. 

The therapist living inside his head sighs and takes a sip from her teacup. _You’re never going to listen to me, are you_ , she asks with a roll of her eyes. _Waste of my goddamned time._

_Fine._

He turns his head against the pillow and draws in a deep breath. The smoke hasn’t stuck here, or at least not yet. It smells like vetiver aftershave and morning breath. He’d give anything to fall asleep again, but now all he can think about is waking up to a frost bitten nose. It won’t do anything for his career, to say the very least.

So he sucks in another sigh and slowly slides out from beneath Claude’s arm. Gooseflesh prickles across his bare skin as he rises and dashes towards the window. He closes it with too much force — hears Claude grumble and turn. It seems only fair for him to at least be minimally disturbed. In any case, Lorenz’s awake now, regrettably. He rubs his hands over his arms and paces until he finds the nearest shirt, which he bends to pick up and nearly tosses over his head until he smells the smoke on it. It makes his stomach churn. No more goddamned fire. He can’t take it anymore.

He traces his way to the closet instead, huffing his breath into his chilled hands and enjoying the slight mischievous spark flickering in his stomach as he looks to the bounty waiting for him. This time he kneels to hunt through a set of low drawers instead of picking from the hangers. He hums in victory when he finds what he’s looking for — an old sweatshirt, and finally something that Claude hasn’t made himself. _DERDRIU_ it announces in faded block letters. He tugs it over his head, shivering this time with pleasure at the touch of its fleecy lining.

He steals a pair of underwear for good measure. It seems a bit unreasonable to expect that Claude owns something as unrefined as sweatpants, and he isn’t going to stand around bare-assed looking for a good replacement — at least not until the radiator’s had a chance to recook the air.

Yawning, he shuts the closet doors and peeks over his shoulder. Claude’s still silent in the bed, a dot of black hair against the linen sheets. It’s sweet. If Lorenz had been more sentimental he might have hunted out his phone and taken a picture. Instead his stomach grumbles. For a second his mind backtracks to his long-forgotten wish for scallops.

_Right._

So then he wonders just what sort of man Claude is — is he the type that’s frustratingly good at everything; a natural not just with a pencil and a needle but with something outrageous, like mandolin playing or aerial yoga or windsurfing, and so will he have a full-stocked fridge filled with farmer’s market oddities that he can masterfully transform into something five-star at the most offhanded request? Or is he a tortured artist subsisting on parboiled rice and take-out and enlightenment alone?

It’s an interesting conjecture. Maybe if the apartment were bigger Lorenz could’ve daydreamed about it for a little longer. Instead he takes two steps and suddenly he’s in the kitchen. He draws back the door of the refrigerator and discovers that Claude’s a bit of a hybrid. The shelves are filled with six bottles of champagne and dried sausages stuffed in medieval-looking casings alongside a hunk of cheese with an intimidating rind; and then, beside them, a handful of crumpled ketchup packets and a jar of pickles that’s mostly brine. A great wave of disappointment nearly knocks Lorenz from his freezing feet until he notices an egg carton.

_Bingo._

And so here’s the thing: when you’re raised alongside a household staff, it can be a little difficult to amass a list of go-to recipes that you can cook yourself. Lorenz had always broken his fast on fluffy waffles and perfectly poached eggs when he’d been a boy, and never once realized that hollandaise and caviar weren’t really standard breakfast offerings. However, eventually he’d been forced to fend for himself, and so he’d rather calamitously hobbled together the following menu: scrambled or hardboiled eyes for breakfast, and a round-robin selection of things to put together for a salad for lunch, and four different bland ways to prepare a chicken breast for dinner or, when he was feeling eager to show off his language lessons, salmon _en papillote_.

He hunts for butter and finds it (it’s in the round, which makes him feel like he wasn’t so far off with the farmer’s market idea, after all). The pan’s more difficult, although he manages to track it down with time. The stovetop’s got two burners but at least it’s gas. He clicks one on and ignores the flicker of the flames as he cracks some eggs into a bowl. Then he whisks them together with a fork and lobs a generous square of butter to brown in the bottom of the pan.

“You are _such_ a thief.”

Lorenz nearly drops the pan on his toes. As it so happens, Claude _is_ in fact multi-talented, and one of those many talents is being silent when he wants to. Lorenz turns and finds him grinning like a cat at the counter, the duvet cinched around his naked shoulders like a cape. He’s got one of his elbows propped against the countertop and his chin’s in his hand as if he’s watching the most amusing thing he’s ever seen.

“Yes, well,” Lorenz huffs, pretending that he’s not blushing, “you left the window open.”

“Mhm,” Claude says. He rubs lazily at his eyes. Then he’s watching him again, and in a way that makes Lorenz feel like he’s both minuscule and a thousand feet tall. “What are you doing?”

“I’m making breakfast.”

Claude turns to look out the window. The sun’s properly set by now, replaced by the streetlights’ amber glow. Then he looks back at him, cocking his eyebrow to flag the absurdity of the idea without making it cruel. Lorenz feels his ears burning. He turns away.

“I didn’t know that you were a chef,” Claude adds. Lorenz puffs out another sound of protest as he pours the eggs into the pan.

“Impressed?”

“Yes,” he answers. It sounds like he’s being honest. Lorenz pushes the eggs around the pan and tries not to bask too fondly in the word. His mind then wanders, the way it always does, to the thoughts that have been sneaking in the shadows for hours.

“Listen,” he says, his voice weaving in and out of the butter popping in the pan. “I’ve been — if you need it, I think I could get you some money.” Claude doesn’t reply outright. Lorenz draws in a deep breath and looks over his shoulder at him. He’s got an expression on his face that’s difficult to define. His eyes are still on him when he slowly shakes his head. “To — you know.”

“No. That’s alright,” Claude answers, shifting his pose to draw both of his hands through his hair, his nose pointed at the countertop. His voice has dipped a register now that they’re talking about _this_ again. “Everything was insured, in any case. It’s not about money.”

 _Of course it isn’t_ , Lorenz wants to agree, and as quickly as he can manage so that Claude doesn’t misunderstand — _but it never hurts to have money, and fuck anyone who tries to trick you otherwise_. Instead he clears his throat and returns his attention on the eggs. Then he divides them across two plates and garnishes them expertly with salt and pepper. He draws two more forks from a nearby drawer and slides one of the plates towards Claude, lingering thereafter with his own still balanced in his hands. Something’s clouded the man’s green eyes, and Lorenz is certain that he’s put it there. He wonders if he should retreat — eat his eggs in the hallway, maybe.

Claude smiles and spears a clump of eggs onto the prongs of his fork and wags his head.

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” he says, “but where in the hell would you get money?”

“Excuse me?” Lorenz’s voice hitches into a familiar wounded tone that’s he’s, quite frankly, gotten quite a lot of use of over the years. Claude laughs good-naturedly and takes another bite.

“You’ve taken it the wrong way,” he chides. “I’m just curious.” _I’m just curious why somebody would wear such shitty clothes if they’re a model with money_ , that’s what he means. Lorenz supposes he has a point. He picks glumly at his meal.

“I...” Lorenz starts and stops again. The next words are dangerous. This wouldn’t be the first time he’s said them, and never before has it gone over well. Then again, he’s got the feeling that Claude will find out eventually. He’s honest, after all — it’s obvious, above all other things, that he’s a curious man. “That is to say, my father is... Well. Old money.”

“Old money?” There’s nothing judgmental in Claude’s tone, at least not yet — just his perpetual amusement, honey-drizzled. Lorenz frowns.

“He’s a — well he’s a count, if you really must know.”

“A _count_.”

“Er,” Lorenz stutters, suddenly wishing they were just talking about stolen sweatshirts and eggs again. “Yes. He’s in the Parliament. But before you think you can win over any political points from me, however, you should know that we aren’t exactly on good terms. That being said, I’m still his son. If I really pressed the point I’m sure I could convince him to make a... worthwhile investment.” Claude puffs a coy breath between his fingers, shaking his head again.

“No shit.”

“No shit,” Lorenz echoes dryly. “You really should consider it. Nothing would make me happier than tricking him into doing something generous for once in his godforsaken life.”

“Does that make you an earl?”

“...No,” Lorenz answers after a moment, and after recovering from the distinct desire to melt into the floorboards. “It’s a hereditary title. I’d — I’ll — under difference circumstances, I’d just be one too.”

“A count,” Claude says again. The back of Lorenz’s neck suddenly feels hot.

“That isn’t the important part. I’m being serious. You really should — what are you doing?” He gapes at the back of Claude’s head as the man’s suddenly spurred to life, slipping from his stool to hunt out something on the floor. His phone, Lorenz realizes only when he’s returned, and this time with his head bowed over the thing as his nimble fingers work across the screen.

“What are you doing?” Maybe second time’s the charm. Lorenz can’t see Claude’s face but somehow he knows that he’s grinning. What he does see is that the man is flicking through his pictures — half-finished clothes on mannequins, mostly, although Lorenz spots a few candids of himself, half-hidden behind his purple hair, which they’ll apparently have to address later.

“This,” Claude says finally, brandishing the phone at him, “is _my_ father.”

It’s a picture of a Claude who’s a little younger and a little more bashful than Lorenz can imagine him ever being now, and dressed neatly in a long white tunic. There’s a man standing at his side, his head thrown back in laughter and one of his arms strung along Claude’s shoulders. His hair’s as white as their outfits and just as crisp and handsome against his umber-colored skin. To the untrained eye he looks a little like a jolly holiday spokesman, but Lorenz knows better, of course. He’d once had dreams of being a lawyer, and that’d meant plenty of undergraduate history courses that had ultimately proven as useless as his career aspirations.

Useless until now, of course. Here’s the grand pay-off of his thesis on Almyran-Fodlanese relations, although he’d never dreamed of cashing it in like this.

“You must be joking,” he breathes, leaning closer. Claude laughs. For some reason that’s what convinces him. “Your father is the _king_ of _Almyra_?” 

Claude tips back the phone and looks at it with a wistful smile, a coil of his hair slipping over his left eye just like it had in that article Lorenz’d once read.

“Yeah. Actually,” Claude replies, a little distant. He flips through the pictures until they’re just benign snapshots again and then sets the phone aside. “He, ah,” he continues, rubbing at his eyes with the knuckle of his thumb. “He had an affair with my mother when he was in his fifties. Married for thirty years. Pretty shitty, right? It got a little difficult to deny once I came around. I grew up over there, but let’s just say that I was always a bit of a black sheep.”

Lorenz can relate, although perhaps not as much as he’d like. There would’ve been something positively poetic about not truly being a full-blooded Gloucester, after everything else he’d done. Still, he doesn’t think about this as much as he does the far more demanding bombshell currently smoking at his feet.

“Do you mean to tell me that you’re a _prince_?” Claude laughs. It echoes into his palms as he rubs his fingers over the first rasping bristles darkening his jawline.

“Much to illustrious Kingdom of Almyra’s collective regret. They all wanted to disinherit me, of course, but wouldn’t you know it — some dusty old king once made it a law to legitimize all patrilineal bastards, so...” He flagged his fingers out into a silent and slightly sad _ta-da!_

“King Al-Masy IV,” Lorenz remembers from his studies. Claude’s lips break into an fresh grin at his cheeky history lesson, his eyes flashing in a way that says _my, I’m impressed_. 

“Yeah. That one. Anyway. A few years ago I decided to cut them a break and emigrate. It’s not like there’s anything for me to do over there.” He looks away, snatching up his fork again to push around the final crumbled bits of egg on his plate. “And I dunno, I guess I thought it might be nice to disappear. To just be normal for a while. But then of course I come over here and, well...”

 _Well_ , Lorenz could offer, _you became a media darling_ ; but what he knows he really means is _you became a scapegoat, and now they want to burn you alive_. He doesn’t say anything. Instead he sets his plate aside and leans across the counter to take one of Claude’s hands in his own. Lorenz doesn’t think he expected that, but his face still softens slightly when he does it.

“In any case, I don’t really like to advertise this sort of thing, so I’d appreciate it if you didn’t spread it around.”

“Of course not,” Lorenz replies quickly. “I... Well, I hope you’ll do the same for me. You might imagine that my father doesn’t have the best reputation.” Claude smiles and lifts their clasped hands to press his lips against Lorenz’s knuckles.

“Cross my heart,” he says. It is without a doubt the most significant moment in Lorenz’s life to have ever featured scrambled eggs. Lorenz glances at the counter and hopes Claude doesn’t notice that his cheeks are on fire.

“Listen,” Claude says after a silent moment spent brushing his thumb alongside Lorenz’s hand, “I’m not going to stop. I’m going to put the show back together.”

Lorenz frowns. He’d been planning on suggesting the same to him once he’d woken, and in the hopes of brightening his mood, but now that the idea is on Claude’s own lips it sounds utterly hopeless. _Just wait until next year,_ Lorenz suddenly wants to beg, and even though he knows by next year those old bats will have long forgotten all about their love affair with this mysterious newcomer who wouldn’t be so new by then. _You’re crazy. Seventeen days. You’re out of your mind_.

“It’s going to be a fucking nightmare,” Claude continues, his voice shifting to something rueful, “but it means too much to me to just give up.” His eyes fix on Lorenz. They make his heart stumble and nearly stop. “I’d like for you to be there for it, but I’ll understand if you don’t want to.”

 _Think about it_ , he says without speaking. For some reason Lorenz feels himself tear up. He laughs and shakes his head in the hope that Claude doesn’t see it.

“Claude,” he sighs, and watches as a gray look of disappointment slips across the man’s face. It makes him want to crawl across the countertop, but God help him if Lorenz can’t keep some shred of self-control to himself. “Of course I will.”

Then he rolls his eyes because why not? There’s something funny in it, isn’t there? It’s all absurd and yet here it is, the inevitable, the impossible. Just like it’s always been. _I never do this_ , he keeps on wanting to shout at him, and yet he’s so goddamned eager to leap off the cliffs that Claude keeps digging at his feet. And why bother with lying if he’s always so good at telling the truth? 

“When have I ever been able to say no to you?”


	4. Life Breathes into Stone

There is something innately adulterous in the act of serving as a model. Lorenz has felt it firsthand — that twinge of infidelity when he slips into the part of a temporary muse, stepping languid down a catwalk in someone else’s clothes only to strip them off twenty seconds later in a rush to make it to the next show. That says nothing for the intimacy he’s shared with photographers and their glassy-eyed lenses. _Look like you love me_ , they often coach and he delivers — sultry, unguarded, two beats away from being lewd. _Look like I’ve hurt you. Look like you care._

And then they break and it’s all over. The photographer spins off to hunch over their computer, bewitched by still images while Lorenz himself shivers alone on the stage. It took him four months to stop his hands from shaking when he felt like that; used. Now it comes naturally. He plays the part to their satisfaction. _You’re good_ , they say, which really means _why aren’t you working with someone better?_ And he also understands what _good_ entails, although sometimes he still wonders if it just means he’s become a better liar.

It’s never really bothered him before. He’d never aspired to become a model, after all, so it’s not like he’d had a moment when he’d thought _yes, finally, my dreams are all coming true_ , only to be disappointed later by the truth. That being said, he does develop a reputation of hitting his mark and being easy to work with, and so he pays his rent and his grocery bills and for his phone, and makes the executive decision that _model_ is what he is.

But now when he looks at the little blips of his gigs scattered across his calendar he feels sick. Smells smoke. He fiddles through each minefield, eyes unfocused on the names of the people he’s supposed to meet, and finds himself with less and less endurance at every click. The first time this happens he still attends. It would put the team in a bind if he didn’t. Not that this would be a disaster — it’s just some department store catalogue eager to use his cheekbones to elevate their evening wear. He thinks _evening wear_ is a bit of a generous term for what they offer, but so it goes. He slips the stuff on and stares down the camera and does what he’s told. They seem pleased with what he’s done when they all say their goodbyes, but afterwards he hunches over in an alleyway and nearly vomits on his shoes.

Maybe he’s eaten something bad, he decides on his subway ride home; maybe it’s the flu. As if he doesn’t notice that he’s picking at his cuticles while he studies over his symptoms against the steady beat of the rocking subway car, or how he’s constantly checking his phone. By the time he makes it back to his apartment he feels like he’s run a marathon. He stares into the mirror and sees his invisible therapist staring back at him.

 _God_ , she sighs, _you’re so fucking stressed_.

So he cancels his next gig. The rush that fills his chest when he informs the disappointed booker gives him enough adrenaline to cancel the rest. _That might have been extreme_ , his invisible therapist notes, but he’s already pulled on his jacket and locked his front door.

 _How are you going to pay your bills_ , she offers as he skips down the stairs two-at-at-time. _I don’t know_ , he answers.

_How are you going to explain this to Dorothea?_

_Aren’t you being a bit rash?_

_You shouldn’t be so naive._

That’s when he decides that he was born to be naive. _You’ll never make it_ , his father had sniffed when he’d left them all behind; _you don’t know the first thing about making a life for yourself_. So perhaps it’s time for Lorenz to prove him right. At least when he does he’ll be doing something worthwhile. 

He steps back down into the depths of the subway and up into a bus again. This time he has to travel a little farther than before. Following the fire, Claude moved what little he had left into the empty second story of a friend’s restaurant that’s only got so much space because it’s in an equally empty part of town. When he’d been younger Lorenz would’ve been frightened to go to a neighborhood like that, convinced as he’d been by men like his father that it was some modern take on a bandit’s lair. But then he’d learned how money pushed people around. Now he recognizes the hallmarks — the boundaries drawn by the criss-cross of railway lines and the unspoken shift when an avenue turns from _North_ to _South_. He knows what it really means.

The bus lumbers onwards towards his stop — _Holiday Ave_ , it’s called. His eyes settle on the faded map snaking along the top of the bus. _Holiday_ comes after _Gronder Plaza_ , but if he makes it to _43rd St. South_ he’s gone too far. He watches the streets whiz by and gets a little dizzy when he realizes that for all of the endless stops notched on the map, there’re no multicolored hashes that correspond with _him_. That, to be honest, he doesn’t really feel at home anywhere, anymore. He wonders if that’s how Claude feels, too, and what that means for the both of them, if it means anything at all. It seems too big of an idea to tackle now. The bus makes its way to Holiday and he steps off, shoves his hands into his pockets, and carries on.

* * *

“Lorrie!” 

True to form, Lysithea is overdoing it. Lorenz dashes forward from the stairwell from which he’s emerged to catch one of the countless boxes she’s got balanced in her arms before it — or she — tumbles to the ground.

“What on earth are you doing,” he puffs. The boxes are heavy. He makes a note to never find himself on Lysithea’s bad side.

“These need to go over there,” she answers, tipping her chin at a fleet of plastic-topped tables. They’re already bowing at the center under the weight of more boxes and too many bolts of fabric to count. Lorenz grunts in acknowledgment as they weave themselves between the busy crowd filling the room. He recognizes some of them from the atelier, but the rest look like him — still dressed in their jackets and a little overwhelmed by the frantic pace of everything unfolding around them. At least the space is huge. It must have been a warehouse, once. Empty it would be eerie, Lorenz thinks, but there’s something about the bustle and the smell of spice and baked bread wafting from downstairs that makes him feel like he’s stepped into some sort of overly ambitious reunion instead.

“Phew,” Lysithea sighs as they make their delivery. She leans against one of the tables and rubs at her brow with her cuff. Lorenz realizes that he’s never seen her sweat before. He imagines the same goes for him, to be fair.

“I knew you’d come,” she adds afterwards, a sly smile blooming across her lips. Lorenz peels off his jacket to make it clear he’s blushing from the heat and not from what she’s said.

“Yes, well,” he says, “as it so happens, I have some free time this week and thought perhaps there might be something I could do to help.”

“Plenty,” Lysithea agrees. She says it with a sigh that insists that _plenty_ isn’t really a generous enough term. Lorenz looks across the room and feels his chest fall. He doesn’t know everything about an atelier’s trade, of course, but he knows more than the average man — enough to be certain that a proper show will include no less than thirty looks that now need to be willed into existence again, and that says nothing about whatever else Claude’s lost. The atelier had been filled to the seams with pieces that had no doubt been promised to awards seasons and socialites anticipating their next gala event. Fashion week aside, they’re the ones who really matter — all of those doe-eyed ingenues who actually pay Claude’s bills, and therefore the salaries of all of the people currently packing the dusty room.

The whole idea leaves Lorenz feeling a little breathless. He decides to focus on a strange scene unfolding before them instead. There’s a man at the center of the room who must be nearly seven feet tall. He’s probably the most intimidating-looking person Lorenz has ever seen, except for the fact that he’s wearing an apron with a frilled edge and balancing a tray of drinks expertly across one of his massive hands. The man catches him staring. So much for Lorenz’s etiquette lessons. He wonders if he’s still got time to crawl into one of those boxes when the man starts walking their way.

“Would you like some iced tea?” the giant asks. Lysithea leans forward first, making a little pleased coo as she takes one of the tall plastic cups from his tray. The ice cubes inside clink together cheerily as she presses it against her cheek.

“Thanks so much, Dedue,” she says. “I had no idea it’d be so hot up here!”

“It is from the ovens,” he agrees with a sage nod. Lorenz takes one of the glasses as well with a timid _thank you very much_. Dedue’s eyes settle on him. They’re green, but not like Claude’s — _seafoam_ , Lorenz thinks. For some reason they remind him of that calming music his therapist had always insisted on playing; rain and whale songs.

“This is Lorenz,” Lysithea intercedes, and just at the moment that Lorenz realizes with horror that he’s lost all of his manners entirely.

“Lorenz Gloucester,” he adds quickly, jutting out his hand. Which is stupid, of course, because Dedue is balancing all of those glasses. The man generously pivots on his heel to set aside his tray, turning back again to swallow up Lorenz’s fingers with his own. Lorenz is certain that with enough force Dedue’s handshake could sweep him off the floor. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“The pleasure is mine. I am Dedue,” he says. It sounds a bit like a final judgment. Lorenz’s lips quirk into a smile.

“This is Dedue’s building,” Lysithea offers between sips. It takes everything in him not to laugh. She’s so obviously loving being in the know, as if she’d been a part of CVR since its inception — the little devil.

“It was very generous of you to offer up so much space,” Lorenz observes. Dedue shakes his head.

“Not at all. If not for Claude, we would not have the restaurant to begin with. Are you acquainted with him?” The way he says it makes it seem like he’s asking if Lorenz is acquainted with the Queen. Lorenz brushes back the curtain of his hair so that he has something to do with his hands.

“Yes, I am,” he answers, perhaps a bit too quickly. “In a way.” Each and every inside part of him cringes. What the hell does _in a way_ mean? It’s not like he’s some sort of goddamned criminal counterpart, after all. “That is to say — yes. We’re friends.” Lysithea snorts into her glass. Dedue, apparently benevolence made flesh, simply nods.

“Hey!” They’re interrupted by a sudden splash of pink. It takes all of Lorenz’s willpower to remain coolly in place (Dedue doesn’t flinch himself, of course). “Hey buddy,” Hilda continues, bracing her hands on her hips as she looks Lorenz over. Her voice is stern but her wry grin betrays her. “This isn’t some soup kitchen. You wanna drink, you gotta work!”

“Hello, Hilda,” Lorenz replies. Her grin glitters wider than ever, and even despite the dark rings around her eyes. “How can I help?”

“Other than stand around and look pretty? I dunno. We’ll figure something out. Put your jacket over there. If you aren’t worried about breaking a nail maybe you can move some of the bolts over there. We need to separate the fabrics by type. Think you can manage that?”

“Whatever you wish,” he replies, although he immediately regrets the words. She loops her arm through his elbow before he has the chance to take them back.

“Fantastic,” she drawls. “Then let’s get started.” Lorenz’s stomach drops to the floorboards as she drags him into a dark and cobwebbed corner.

* * *

Lorenz has a number of epiphanies that afternoon. The most enlightening are as follows: 

One: While his years of fencing have made him quick on his feet, they’ve done nothing notable for his upper body strength. It’s pitiful, particularly compared to Dedue’s bulldozer approach towards rearranging the room, but at least the others keep their teasing to themselves.

Two:His childhood sniffling was absolutely a dust allergy, and the room is absolutely full of dust; and there is nothing charming about him when he’s suddenly sneezing and pink-eyed.

Three: Claude is the cockiest man he’s perhaps ever met, but only because he’s paid for it with nearly comic (or perhaps it’s _cosmic_ ) generosity. Lorenz learns that the unfamiliar faces hard at work transforming the lofted warehouse into an atelier are all beneficiaries, in one way or another, of Claude’s admirable attempts to empty his portion of Almyra’s coffers into Fodlanese pockets. There’s Dedue, of course, who’s paid for seventy-five percent of his (admittedly extraordinary, as Lorenz learns at dinner) restaurant out of a loan that seems to be implicitly understood to be interest-free and without a due date; and Dedue’s partner Ashe, a man with a charming spatter of freckles and a culinary degree thanks in large part to Claude’s version of a scholarship; and a full family from Morfis, toddlers to grannies, who don’t speak a word of Fodlanese but’ve still served as the de facto heart and order of the Warehouse District for years — or at least until their coffee house-turned-midnight-diner burned to the ground.

And, lastly, number four: it felt good to do something for someone else. Maybe Claude had learned this lesson, too. Lorenz doesn’t immediately have the opportunity to ask him the question. Despite everyone’s good-natured gossip about him, the man himself is suspiciously absent from his new workroom. Lorenz learns from Hilda that he’s been assigned to begging patience from his patrons since dawn, not to mention the seemingly impossible task of chasing down enough fabric to build a new collection in two week’s time. Lorenz comes to better understand just how divine all of that watercolor charmeuse was that’s now been transformed into black soot left to molder at the old atelier. It makes him sick to think about it, but everything else makes him sick, too, so he keeps on sweeping and arranging bolts into straight, militant lines and tries not to fixate on anything too closely.

Lysithea disappears with Cyril at nine o’clock that night. Their exit starts an exodus of bleary-eyed volunteers. They all slip down the stairs into the restaurant and the street beyond with promises of _see you tomorrows_ and _call me if you need anythings_ aimed at Hilda and Marianne. The two women linger later, taking extra time to set up tall cork boards covered with polaroids. Lorenz recognizes the purple of his hair from across the room. There’d been a similar arrangement in the studio down the street, although this one is notably missing the little sketches that had once represented the looks meant to accompany all of those overly serious headshots. He doesn’t study this new recreation too closely — focuses on organizing a sea of buttons instead.

Hilda whispers something to Marianne. Nearly everything echos in the open rafters now that the rest have gone. Lorenz is quite certain that he hears his name, but something in the way that Marianne sighs afterwards makes him think that they aren’t saying anything too particularly unkind. He glances up from a handful of tortoise shell buttons and catches Hilda smiling at him. She quickly turns it into a more predictable grin before waving her hand.

“We’re off for tonight! Thanks so much for the help, Lor. They’re gone downstairs, too. Be careful — the doors lock behind you.”

“Goodnight,” he answers back. Marianne waves as well. They’re clever, he thinks — not asking if he wants directions home. Or maybe he’s just too easy to read, anymore. He slips the buttons into a little plastic drawer and decides that it doesn’t really matter.

It starts to get chilly about an hour after they’ve left. Lorenz stands from his work station to hunt out one of the space heaters waiting for him in a far corner. He wheels it across the room and nearly makes it back to his seat before he spies a towering pile of folded muslin. The humble fabric looks like the finest down to him after his many hours spent hunched against the cruel plastic of the schoolhouse chair on which he’s been sequestered. He glances over his shoulder to make sure no one’s snuck themselves into some dark corner to spy on him before he tentatively pats one of the piles.

Well, it wouldn’t hurt to rest his eyes.

He shifts some of the piles into a better shape and sits between them, throwing his arms under his head as he tests a lounging pose. It feels divine to stretch his legs across the floor. He thinks he should set a timer on his phone so that he isn’t caught napping. It seems like a very good idea. He can feel the bulk of his phone in his back pocket. Fifteen minutes, no more. All he needs to do is move his arm from its drape across his eyes and then he can set it. The timer, that is. The space heater pops and creaks. Lorenz’s breathing slows. He thinks about buttons. It takes him awhile to realize that he’s dreaming, not thinking.

He wakes up later warm and stiff-jointed. The room doesn’t smell like dust so much anymore. Now it’s sandalwood and five-spice and the faintest hint of smoke. He peeks open one of his eyes and finds himself staring into a tumble of black hair. It’s nearly as dark as the wool of the coat tucked around his shoulders. He can feel the heat of Claude’s breath against his neck; slow and steady and dreamy. In the morning Lorenz will have to chide him for turning him into some sort of glorified mattress, sprawled as Claude is atop him, his arms strung loosely around his hips. Hardly seems fair. If anyone’s doing the sprawling, it very well should be _him_. Lorenz might be taller but he’s still _smaller_. Aren’t those the rules?

Lorenz buries his nose deeper into Claude’s hair and shuts his eyes. It feels like he’s swallowed a flock of butterflies. He doesn’t fall asleep again for a long time afterwards, but its not like he really minds.

* * *

“Worry not,” Dorothea announces, her arms spread wide, “for I have arrived.” 

Lorenz eyes her over the pile of pattern pieces he’s been cutting for what feels like six hundred fucking hours. She looks fresh and dewy, her nose still pink from the chill outside and her hair tumbled in its usual perfect wave. Lorenz has been showering for the past four days in the little bathroom behind the kitchen downstairs. It’s a wonder that the place has a shower at all, but of course it’s not an apartment or even a flophouse, it’s a goddamned _restaurant_ , so it’s got no hot water other than the stuff in the kitchen sinks. He’s not stupid enough to linger long beneath the shower head, so he doesn’t wet his hair, and so maybe _it_ would have a perfect wave too if he hadn’t knotted it into a sloppy, disgusting, unbecoming bun by-way-of-topknot like some kind of outdated hipster _monster_.

“Hello,” he responds venomously. She laughs, and perhaps only because they both know she doesn’t really deserve his vitriol.

“I brought you a latte,” she concedes as she drags a chair to his side. Then she looks over the little muslin puzzle pieces scattered across his workspace. “Are you... _sewing_?”

“No.” He takes her offered drink mostly to warm his fingers against the cup. It’s a Sunday. The restaurant’s closed that day, which means that its busy ovens aren’t baking the space like they usually do. There’s only so much the space heaters can manage in the meantime. “Apparently that is not a skill that I possess. However, you will be pleased to learn that I am still equipped with an above-average ability to cut in a straight line.” He waves his shears at her. Dorothea giggles behind her coffee.

“I always thought you were the scrapbooking type.” She leans back against her chair and eyes the army of half-dressed mannequins arranged across the floor. “Wow. You guys have already made a lot of progress.”

Lorenz likes the idea of being included in her commendation, although he hardly feels like its deserved. In the past four days he’s been transported back to his very first months in Fhirdiad, running odd jobs and sweeping up scraps while the rest of them do the actual work of putting together something as ethereal as a fashion show. He’s fairly certain that Claude has cloned himself, to be quite honest— every time Lorenz glances over his shoulder he’s someplace new, his hands on his hips as he looks over Hilda’s progress in wrangling a corps of sew-ers armed with ancient-looking sewing machines, or running through his hair as he studies his sketches tossed against the cork boards. Then he’s running down the stairs to hunt down supplies, each more impossible than the last to find, and somehow he always comes back victorious a few hours later.

It’s all exhausting, frankly. Lorenz cuts Marianne’s neat-drawn patterns. That he can manage. He doesn’t ask many questions, other than _what else?_ It seems to work, at least so far. 

“Hey,” Dorothea asks him after he’s had the chance to cut another panel into shape.“So. Are you going to tell me why you canceled all of your gigs this month?”

Quite honestly, Lorenz was expecting a bit more small talk before she fixed him with that deadly gaze of hers. She’s fantastic at it, by the way — glaring. He feels like he’s about to combust.

“I,” he starts, then stops, knowing that the excuse he was about to spit out hardly sounds convincing. “I wanted to help.”

“Mhm.” She scoots her chair closer to his. The whir of the nearby sewing machines swallows up the drag of the chair legs. “So cancel some of them. Hell, half of them, even. Not _all_ of them, Lorenz. Do you have any idea how much damage control I’ve had to do?” His chest sinks. He sets aside his shears and finally looks her in the eye.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” he offers. “I can manage it myself.”

“You are such an asshole sometimes, you know that?” She’s tapping her nails against the tabletop, which means that she’s more worried than she is upset. Lorenz wishes it were the opposite.

“I’m sorry,” he acquiesces. She sighs.

“Look.” She crosses her arms; uncrosses them. Settles with crossing her legs instead. “I understand why you want to help. It’s great that you want to help. But helping doesn’t mean ruining everything you’ve worked so hard for. This industry is too small for you to be burning bridges.” Lorenz’s lips quirk diagonal. He knows it wasn’t intentional, but it’s not perhaps the best turn of phrase.

“Well. So be it, then.”

“Lorenz,” she scolds him. He very rarely hears her speak like this. It reminds him of his mother, if she’d ever cared about him like this — unconditionally. “This is not _your_ show.”

“I am quite aware of that,” he snips. “Thank you.” They both know the words aren’t intended as a gratitude.

“And you’re not going to pay your rent with one gig.”

“I thought you said Fashion Week was going to be my big break,” he contends dryly. She doesn’t deserve it, but he knows each word she’s saying to him is right, and so he’s very quickly finding himself with his back to a wall that he can’t possibly climb up. It would make anyone a little desperate. 

“Funny,” she counters with the same parched tone. “Very funny. Do you think your landlord is going to think it’s funny, too?” He stops himself from answering; cuts out another shape instead. Dorothea darts forward to clap her hands around his to stop him.

“You know how I feel about Claude,” she tells him, this time under her breath. “He’s great. Whatever. That doesn’t mean that you need to sacrifice yourself for him. He doesn’t need it. Look at everybody here.”

“I wasn’t aware that I was such a martyr.” She’s getting closer to the truth of everything, which is only making Lorenz meaner. Now it’s too late, of course — they’ve both been known to have a bit of a hot temper.

“Oh yeah. You’re a real saint. And so what is it that you’re gonna do if you don’t ascend after the show? Go back to scrubbing toilets?”

“I suppose that we shall just find out.” This is not the right thing for Lorenz to say. Dorothea’s nostrils flare. It looks like she’s about to bite him.

“Fantastic. Fantastic idea, Lorenz. Spectacular. Your best one yet. And here I was, stupid enough to worry about you.”

“Dorothea—”

“No! No, you’re right. You’re right. Sure, it’s taken you a year to get your shit together, but better if you just play manservant instead. Natural progression, right? But come on. I’m curious. Just tell me this. Did they hire you? Huh? Are you a proud member of CVR? Their official scissor sister? Is that it?”

“Honestly,” he snaps, although it doesn’t stop her. She stands from her chair, a part of her apparently knowing she’s already said too much as she shoves her hands through the sleeves of her jacket again.

“You always do this. Sabotage yourself. Maybe I’m just too stupid to figure it out — it never stops, does it? I think you fucking _like it_. It’s just Alexas all over again.”

 _It’s not_ , he wants to snap back, but if he does he’ll make a scene, and then what the hell would any of this been for? Moreover, he knows that even Dorothea can’t believe what she’s just said — that Claude could be anything like Alexas, that insufferable bastard who’d strung Lorenz along for far too long and with too much feigned kindness along the way, until Lorenz had been a useless tangle on Dorothea’s couch for a miserable pair of lost weeks.

But then part of him knows that she’s being honest. Part of him believes her, too. He’s been sharing a creaking cot with Claude hidden in the far corner of the room, but other than that they’ve been little more than ghosts sneaking past each other in the daytime. And their sleeping together has been just that — _sleeping_ , like a man curled up with his favorite dog when the weather gets too cold — and Claude’s always awake and gone by the time Lorenz is, too. And then there’s the childish simplicity of the fact that Claude to Lorenz is just _Claude_ , and Lorenz is to all of them the same. No one whispers _oh, there’s Claude’s partner,_ after all, that singular, powerful word that would rub a little bit of Claude’s magic off on him; he’s just another one of Claude’s endless friends.

“Sorry,” Dorothea mutters breathlessly once she notices that Lorenz is seriously considering her point. He shakes his head.

“Forget it. You’re right. Forget it.”

Her mouth moves but she doesn’t say anything else. Instead she hugs her arms and nods her head and stares at her toes.

“Just,” she manages lamely, “look out for yourself, you know?” 

“Thank you, Dorothea,” he answers with the conviction of a formal goodbye. She nods again with a wince and watches him for a moment before she turns and leaves him behind. Lorenz spreads another bolt of muslin across the tabletop and cuts, and cuts, and cuts.

* * *

It’s late. Once again Lorenz finds himself alone in the workroom, and this time Dorothea’s diatribe has nearly spooked him into running away. It would be easy enough to leave a scribbled excuse behind — _went home for a change of clothes_ , he could write, or maybe _be back soon_. But there’s something definitive in the building’s automatic locks. They’re no different than those god-awful gates at the Gloucester estate, really; or the glass doors of the firm with which he’d been so thrilled to interview until they’d recognized his name, once fallow earth salted by his own spurned father. He’s run through so many doors in his life and they’ve all locked fast behind him, and he knows what its like to pound his fists against them once they’ve closed. So he stays and sweeps the clean-swept floors because he thinks that he might be stupid for staying, but he’ll be a madman if he keeps on doing the same thing with the expectation that something different will follow after.

“Hey.”

He turns towards the door and spots Claude unwinding his scarf. He sounds happy to see him, although all he really looks is _tired_. The bitter knot at the center of Lorenz’s chest loosens slightly.

“Is everybody else gone?”

“Yes,” Lorenz answers. Claude nods and starts a slow circle around the room. He inspects each station with careful attention, running his fingers over half-finished hems and slashes of ruched fabric ready to be draped. Lorenz suddenly feels something kindred with the mannequins. It makes the knot tighten again.

“What are you doing?” Claude asks with a soft and teasing tone. His gaze settle on Lorenz’s broom. Lorenz eyes the gap-toothed bristles and does his best to hide a frown. 

“Sweeping,” he offers. Claude grins and rubs at his eyes.

“I can see that.” Claude drifts towards a tabletop covered with a dozen designs that haven’t yet made the cut. There’s that pose from that old article again — his arms planted against the table as he leans over, fingers drumming while he inspects all of the lines he’s drawn. He looks like a general at a war table, Lorenz thinks. The selection at hand seems almost as dire. “Are you hungry?”

This isn’t a question that Lorenz supposes many generals have asked before. He flushes slightly, but thankfully Claude’s got his back to him now and isn’t looking to see.

“No,” Lorenz answers quickly. “Ashe brought us all something to eat.” Claude nods, leafing a few pages apart.

“Good,” he says distractedly. Lorenz grinds his thumbnail into the soft wood of the broom handle.

“Are you?” Lorenz asks.

“Huh?”

“Have you eaten something?”

Claude answers with a noncommittal wave over his shoulder. Lorenz realizes that he probably can’t expect much else in way of a response, at least not for a while. It seems as hopeless as his endless sweeping. He wrings the broom between his palms and sets it aside. Then he starts to pace along the tables, looking at everything without really recognizing anything for more than it’s color, it’s shape. It’s all amorphous, really, and by design. Everything has the potential to become beautiful once Claude twists it the right way. For some reason the idea makes Lorenz feel insufferably small.

 _It’s not your show_ , Dorothea reminds him. _Go home_ , she says in his head now. But where is that, anyways? If he swings that door downstairs open and it locks behind him, just where in the hell is he supposed to go?

“Hey.”

Lorenz realizes that he’s hunched over a window. It’s filled with frosted glass, so it’s not like he’s got anything to look at. That makes him feel a little stupid, but he still doesn’t turn at Claude’s voice. “Lorenz,” Claude adds, sounding equal parts amused and annoyed.

“Mmh?” Lorenz hears Claude tapping something against the table — a pen, maybe, most likely. For a few seconds it’s the only sound in the room.

“Would it upset you if I asked you not to sleep with anyone else?”

Lorenz can feel the steam rising from the nape of his neck as a flush floods from his scalp to the divot of his collarbones. This is not what he was expecting. He turns on his heels and there Claude is, leaning against the table and facing him with a lopsided grin that seems infinitesimally less confident than usual.

“Excuse me,” Lorenz stutters. “Just who on earth is it that you think I’m sleeping with?” He waves his arm across this room that’s become something of a very progressive prison. “Hilda?” Claude puffs out a surprised laugh, his brows arching high.

“I wouldn’t recommend you try that,” he warns him as he pushes off from his perch. “I didn’t mean to fluster you.”

“I’m _not_ flustered,” Lorenz snaps. Claude laughs. Lorenz’s the one with the long legs, but somehow Claude always got broad strides. Already he’s close enough to tease a strand of hair behind Lorenz’s ear — the stupid, predictable jerk. Lorenz bats away his hand. It doesn’t seem to deter him.

“Still. What would you say if I did?”

“What, if you what? Slept with someone?” Lorenz realizes that he’s started to garble Claude’s proposal but, well, it’s preposterous, quite frankly, the way he’s laid it out. Claude laughs again. If he’d been anyone else it might’ve been a cruel sound, but since it’s him of course it’s somehow reassuring.

“No,” Claude answers patiently. “Not exactly.” His eyes are tracking Lorenz’s, and no matter how desperately Lorenz tries to look at anything else; the headless mannequins, the discarded coil of Claude’s goldenrod scarf. Outrageous, Lorenz thinks, his heart beating far faster than it should. 

“You can’t do anything in the normal sort of way, can you?” Lorenz asks him. Claude laughs — this one is quiet, mostly just a breath — and tips his head slightly to the side. A shiver travels down Lorenz’s spine as he watches Claude’s eyes dip to his lips. 

“I thought I did,” Claude admits. “But just now I’ve come to the realization that you might not have understood me.”

“Excuse me,” Lorenz attempts again, just as haughty as before but half as honest. “Your outrageous parlance has nothing to do with me.”

“You’re impossible.”

Lorenz prepares another retort but it’s lost against the press of Claude’s lips. His kiss isn’t chaste, because nothing he does is ever chaste. Lorenz sighs half from exasperation and half from something far more desperate. He feels the edge of the windowsill against his back and the chill of the night through the glass. It would be easy to sink forward into the warmth of Claude’s chest and simply forget the rest, but Lorenz knows that easy things aren’t always the best things to chase after.

“Claude,” he stammers as the man slots one of his leg between his knees. “Claude. Listen to me.” _This isn’t how you ask a question_ , is what he should add, but Claude’s obedient enough all of a sudden that it seems nearly cruel to actually berate him. “Why would you want something like that?”

One of Claude’s brows twists at the question, but he doesn’t make a move to back down. Lorenz steels himself as well. It’s just like sitting pretty in front of a camera, he thinks; waiting for Claude to tell him _you look great under these lights_ and _pretend that I love you_. Claude’s lips flatten into a look that Lorenz has never seen on him before. Serious but no longer coy.

“I want to be with you,” he answers, this time leaving little room for misunderstandings, “because you’re like me.” Something passes over his face that leaves him looking nearly bashful. “Maybe that makes me a narcissist. I don’t know. I’ve heard it before. I guess I don’t really mind the word.”

“Because I’m like you,” Lorenz replies flatly, leaving his _I’m nothing like you, just look at me_ left unspoken. Claude hums his agreement.

“You don’t want to be used,” Claude explains, “but you want to be useful. You know when to step away from a fight you’ll never win. You know what it’s like to have everything and want nothing — have nothing, want everything.” He reaches forward to thumb the round of one of Lorenz’s shirt buttons. “We all just want to love ourselves, don’t you think?”

“That’s ridiculous,” Lorenz huffs.

“Sure,” Claude laughs. “Maybe. But you want me to be honest with you, don’t you?”

“I’m not... _you_ ,” Lorenz blusters, because even he isn’t charmed enough to ignore the warning signs in what Claude’s said.

“Thank God for that,” Claude replies disarmingly, a grin on his lips again. “That’s the part that I like, too. But I don’t think you want me to say that, do you? That you’re gorgeous? That sometimes I just want to hide you away and have you all to myself? I have this feeling that you think there’s something spoiled in beautiful things, but look at me, Lorenz — you know me well enough now, you see what I do — beauty’s what I chase after.”

“So you just like the chase, is that it?” Lorenz thinks that it’s a good question. Claude hums as though he thinks it is, too. He dips his gaze as he works the button he’s been playing with out of its eyelet.

“You’re not like that,” Claude promises him. “Just something running. You’re,” he adds, his eyes darting quickly to the rafters as he collects his thoughts, “you’re the end of a maze.”

“The end,” Lorenz repeats darkly. Being the end of anything doesn’t sound so terribly romantic.

“The end,” Claude agrees. “And when I get there I’ll brick myself in. Won’t need the sun.”

“Don’t be stupid.” Another laugh. Lorenz adds to it with a startled huff of his own as Claude suddenly loops his arms around his knees. Then Lorenz is sitting on the thick ridge of the windowsill, his back against the icy window as Claude teases apart the rest of his shirt buttons.

“There’s nothing wrong with being stupid,” Claude contends. Lorenz’s breath catches in his throat when he leans forward to brush his lips against the bow of his collarbones. The first blue hint of his stubble scratches against his skin. “Don’t say no.”

“You can’t tell me what to do,” Lorenz says. His stubbornness sounds threadbare, even to his own ear. Still he perseveres, because what else does he have left but perseverance? “After the show.” Claude’s voice rumbles wordless in response against the centerplate of Lorenz’s ribs. “After the show,” Lorenz continues, gripping at the cotton shoulders of Claude’s shirt. “Everyone will want a piece of you.”

“Everyone always wants a piece of me,” Claude replies shamelessly. Lorenz’s throat bobs as Claude’s hands skirt down his sides to settle on his fly.

“You’ll get distracted,” Lorenz insists. It’s easy to picture in his mind. He’s not going to do his again — throw himself into a pit without a ladder. Not even with Claude’s hot breath against his stomach.

“Not from you.”

“Of course you will. Eventually. You’ll find other things to do.”

“No.” Claude punctuates his reply by tugging Lorenz’s slacks downwards brusquely to fold around his knees. The brick of the windowsill is rough and cold against his thighs. Part of him hates it, but not enough of him to stop him.

“Claude,” he still fights, winding his fingers in the man’s hair as he kneels between Lorenz’s knotted legs. Claude answers by sinking his teeth into the meat of his inner thigh — not hard enough to hurt, but enough for Lorenz to suck in a tight breath and forget about the rest of everything he’d prepared to say.

“Do you know what I find funny?” Claude asks the questions with molten eyes. Lorenz shivers again. “Whenever you hear about an artist and his muse, its the muse that everyone pities. As if they’re somehow lesser. Something taken from. I don’t believe it. Not a word of it. We all pray to the same altar, you know. Us wretched creators. In-spir-ration. It’s like a drug. Endless. You can never get enough.” The steam of Claude’s breath is inching closer to Lorenz’s cock. He feels like he’s about to die.

“I’ll ask you however you want,” Claude persists. “Call you whatever you like. Just stay here with me after everything is over. Please.”

Lorenz holds his breath for long enough that it feels like he’s going to break. Then he pulls Claude up off his knees with a tug of his hair and kisses him with enough dizzying desperation for him to understand his answer.

* * *

The collection is three-quarters finished when the models start falling out. The first three aren’t too surprising— perhaps they’ve just had their own private crises like Lorenz had his own. Maybe it’s karma, he thinks. Models are capricious. But then the fourth and fifth disappear by way of curtly polite emails that read _thank you very much for your interest, however our agency has decided to re-evaluate our resources at the present time._ At least the seventh bothers to rescind her position in person. 

_Sorry_ , she says, and it sounds like she really means it; _I just can’t put my neck on the line_.

Lorenz is busy handing out coffees to the seamstresses when he hears the news. He politely excuses himself and retreats into the nearest bathroom. Then he turns on the faucet and stares at the water swirling around the drain for six uninterrupted minutes. He emerges afterwards convinced that he’ll just have to wear all of the goddamned clothes himself.

Claude’s waiting for him in the hallway. He’s grinning like always, which means he must not yet know what’s happened. Lorenz’s chest feels like its folding in on itself. He’s never been good with bad news. It’s one of the side effects of living a privileged life. Even if he’s not as silver-spooned now, it’s always terribly difficult to make _I’m so sorry this has happened to you_ sound authentic. And that has nothing to do with the fact that he’s convinced that eventually Claude’s brave facade is going to break. He has to be selfish eventually — has to wallow in the enormous injustice of everything. Right?

“I have a job for you,” Claude tells him before he gets the chance to say anything at all. “Do you think you could teach a few people how to walk?”

“Yes? Er, pardon?”

Claude laughs and brushes his fingers against Lorenz’s hip. He likes doing that sort of thing, Lorenz has learned — casual contact that’s simple for him, but always leaves Lorenz feeling a little drunk.

“I’d prefer not to roll mannequins down the runway,” he explains wryly. “Come on. You’ll do fantastic.” His roving hand catches at Lorenz’s wrists and draws him down the hallway. Lorenz doesn’t have the chance to stutter any clarifying questions. Instead he’s suddenly in front of a room filled with more unfamiliar faces.

“Some of you know Lorenz,” Claude tells them in that sort of way that makes it sound like he’s even more comfortable speaking in front of a crowd than he is with whispering in Lorenz’s ear. “He’s the best in the business — and of course that means that he’s a busy man, but he’s been generous enough to offer us some tips. Listen to him and you can’t go wrong.”

They all bob their heads in agreeing nods. Claude peeks over at him and winks. Lorenz feels as though he’s been transported back in time to his first piano recital at eight years old. He’d very nearly forgotten how to move his fingers at all, back then, sweating through the back of his tiny suit before he finally managed to plod trough an adolescent version of _Fur Elise_.

As he comes to understand Claude’s request, he isn’t convinced that he has much of a better show to offer now. For one thing — and quite absurdly — Claude has no idea how he walks at all. Lorenz hadn’t actually shown him at his goo-see. Claude had been too insistent on lunch instead, the cheeky ruffian. And beyond that, and for all of his pride, Lorenz does have to admit that he’s only really middling at it. It’s not like he’s ever had proper coaching himself. He was just an aristocrat, once, that’s all, and that sort of thing requires good posture and a haughty gait that can be mistaken for grace on a catwalk.

The room does not appear to be filled with the heirs of the aristocracy now, moreover, and they certainly don’t look like the usual herd of go-see waifs in black tank tops and thin-legged jeans. Somehow Lorenz already knows just who they are — the Warehouse District’s sons and daughters, most of them still dressed in snowcapped coats and staring at him with a mixture of bemusement and outright doubt.

“Ah,” Lorenz starts, because he knows he has to say something, and that something can’t possibly be _oh no, I’d really rather not_. “Yes. Well. It’s nothing too complicated, really. If you’d all just take off your coats we can... I suppose that we can begin.”

Claude offers him a megawatt smile before turning to chase down whatever impossible task is waiting for him. And Lorenz really should be miffed, of course, or at the very least concerned that dragging people off the street and onto a Fashion Week show is apparently their only option to pull this damned thing off, but instead he’s simply charmed.

* * *

They do alright. Lorenz isn’t certain that any of them will be juggling agency offers, but after an afternoon of prancing long lines down the length of the warehouse he thinks that they’ll at least not trip over their own toes. What they lack in experience they make up for in enthusiasm. Petra certainly leads the pack in that regard. She says _we will be mastering this!_ so many times that even Lorenz starts to believe her. (And, on one hand, he can’t disagree, as she certainly has a presence to her; but she’s also a boxer and looks like one — looks like she could tear Lorenz in half, honestly — and it’s not like Claude’s making activewear).

Lorenz rewards himself for his class work with a rare visit home. It’s gotten to the point that even _he_ can’t argue against the idea. He absolutely must wash his hair. And he almost makes it — almost turns himself into a human again and God, he can’t wait for hot water. But with only twelve paces left between himself and his shower curtain, Lorenz mounts the last step in the stairwell and finds himself staring his demise straight in its chartreuse-colored eyes.

“Bleagh,” he stutters indelicately, and there it is, his last word. He can speak three fucking languages and that’s the one he chooses? It’s pitiful, and worse that they’ll find his body in a borrowed t-shirt and with greasy hair.Death looks back at him rightfully unimpressed, itself dressed in a severe black jacket with a high collar and a knitted cap topped with a tinseled pom-pom that, quite frankly, looks a little out of place in light of the rest of its monotone ensemble.

“Lorenz!” Another pom-pom peeks over Death’s shoulder. It’s accompanied beneath by Ferdinand, his long hair tumbled over his shoulders and dusted with sparkling snow. “Thank goodness! I was afraid that you weren’t home.”

Lorenz braces each and every muscle in his body so that he doesn’t tumble backwards down the stairs. Falling might have been preferable, he thinks even as he stands fast, his mind wandering to his disgusting top-knot again.

“Ferdinand,” he manages thinly. “What a...lovely surprise.”

Ferdinand darts around his taciturn companion to loop his arms around Lorenz. He smells like cinnamon and vanilla, like some sort of coffee shop holiday special. There is no chance in hell that Lorenz smells like anything other than the hand soap he’s been using as a body wash and the slightly moldy tang of that old cot.

“Oh, _Lorenz_ ,” Ferdinand sighs as he holds him back at arm’s distance, admiring each part of him as if there was anything admirable left. “I’ve missed you so terribly. Imagine how distraught I would have been if we hadn’t found you!”

“Quite,” Lorenz answers. His mind slowly ticks into the proper position to realize that they’re still standing awkwardly at the landing in front of his door. He clears his throat. “Do come in, won’t you?”

“If it wouldn’t be a trouble,” comes Ferdinand’s reply, as if he isn’t already uncoiling the length of his scarf as he says it. Lorenz can’t help but smile as he nods and fishes for his keys. “Goodness, but where are my manners. Of course you are not yet acquainted with dear Hubert, although I hope you won’t be cross to learn that I’ve told him positively everything about you.”

 _I certainly hope not_ , Lorenz thinks.

“All good things, I pray,” is what he says as he turns to offer Hubert his hand. Hubert doesn’t smile back at him, per say, but he looks a little less murderous than before when he shakes his hand.

“Hubert Vestra,” the named man says. He sounds exactly like Lorenz was expecting. Ferdinand’s smiling so brightly at him as he says it that it’s like he’s recited a love poem instead of his name. And it’s not like Lorenz is made from stone — he can’t help but be a little charmed.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” he answers honestly as he guides them both through the door.

“How lovely,” Ferdinand coos as he enters into Lorenz’s apartment. “You’ve always had such an eye for design, Lorenz.”

Lorenz quickly bends to snatch up a pile of bills from the floor and hides them behind a bottle of olive oil in the nearby kitchen. Then he glances across his apartment for that design Ferdinand is talking about and, finding none, sighs.

“Yes, well, and you’ve always been so diplomatic.”

Ferdinand laughs into his hand.

“I really have missed you,” the man then says in a less affected tone. Hubert helps him with his coat. Afterwards Lorenz takes both from them and lingers for a second before carefully draping their coats across the end of his couch.

“It’s been so long,” Lorenz agrees, nodding at the kitchen table. His mother would probably faint to know that this is the only part of his apartment equipped to play host to more than two but, well, he’s a changed man, after all. “Can I offer you something to drink? Tea?”

“Tea,” Ferdinand answers in unison. Lorenz grins at his predictability and then turns to hunt out his kettle.

“Are you in Fhirdiad long?” He asks the question over his shoulder as he fills the kettle from the faucet. His eyes linger on the stream on water for a moment as he grieves for his delayed shower.

“I’d hoped not,” Ferdinand admits ruefully. “And yet it seems that we shall be. I’m afraid we’re here for something dreadfully bureaucratic. I’ve done some reading, you see, and — well, naturally, I feel as though you already know all about it, Lorenz, you were always so clever with the law. Oh!” He presses his fingers against his lips, suddenly aghast. “And yet now I realize that there is so much that I have yet to tell you.” His cheeks then turn a color nearly the same tone as his hair. “You — well, you may not know, but my dearest Hubert and I, that is to say—”

“I saw,” Lorenz intervenes before Ferdinand titters himself into conniption. He offers them both a smile, and if only partially out of the fear that Hubert may otherwise feel compelled to defend their honor. “Congratulations. I’m so happy for you both.”

Ferdinand turns an even more delighted shade of scarlet and claps his hand over Hubert’s atop the table. 

“Thank you. You and I have endured so much together, my dear old friend, don’t you think? You know better than anyone that I seemed destined for a life far more lonely than I’ve been given. Who would have thought. Ah, but I’ve started to ramble, haven’t I? What you might be less surprised to learn is that Father was not... pleased by our news.”

Watching the steam coil from the kettle, Lorenz steps forward to snatch it from the stovetop before it whistles and interrupts Ferdinand. It gives him the opportunity to settle his own nerves as well. Ferdinand’s right, of course — he isn’t surprised by what’s not yet been said. He hears Ferdinand clear his throat while he searches for a set of mugs for their drinks.

“And so has come about my emancipation,” Ferdinand continues with an overly-cheery tone. Lorenz slips around the half-wall of the kitchen to scatter their mugs at their places. Hubert has settled a reassuring hand on Ferdinand’s shoulder. It looks nearly as out of place as that pom-pom, but Lorenz likes to see it nonetheless.

“I’m sorry, Ferdinand,” Lorenz tells him quietly as he returns to the kitchen for the kettle.

“Yes, well, he was always a bit of a...bastard,” Ferdinand replies, as reluctant as ever to swear. “To be honest with you, I feel that a great weight has been lifted from my shoulders.”

“It’s not all bad,” Lorenz agrees. He finally takes his seat. “Better that you’re away from all of that mess.”

“Quite right.” Ferdinand thumbs the handle of his mug while they wait for the tea to steep. The ramshackle collection of coffee mugs is a far cry from the china they’d once shared in rose gardens and conservatories and silk-papered salons. But at least now they can speak honestly, Lorenz thinks, instead of in the veiled allusions they’d always used before.

“In any case,” Ferdinand continues, “and as you understand well yourself, I find that I am now without some of the regular...foundations of one’s life that are important to maintain. And so Hubert and I have done some research, and have discovered that if I am able to — of course, this sounds rather absurd, and yet here it is — if I am able to contend that I am dependent on Hubert’s support — which of course I am, my darling,” he adds, his eyes glimmering with an ostentatious affection as he glances in Hubert’s direction, “although not perhaps in _this_ way — if I am able to do such a thing, then there is a manner in which I can request to be adopted by him.” He sighs, his eyes now darting to the light fixture above their heads. “To be honest with you, it sounds rather tawdry when you say it aloud. And yet there it is. No matter how unsavory the methods, they are methods none the less. You understand, of course. If God forbid something were to happen to one of us, and for the other to be turned away because they could contend that we were not _family_ ,” his freckled face turns a little green. “Well. I would not bear it. But better to go about the appropriate channels. And, moreover, to be honest with you, I am rather eager to be done with being an Aegir.”

Lorenz laughs and shakes his head. There’d been a time when Ferdinand had been so proud of that goddamned name, but of course Lorenz understands his revulsion now. He’d even considered changing his own name, once, but had decided on keeping it after he’d realized how horrified his father would be if he ever gained any traction as someone to know. Even better if he earned infamy instead. _The Great Homosexual Gloucester,_ he occasionally daydreamed headlining the gossip columns at home.

“It sounds complicated,” Lorenz admits to them as he leans forward to pour their tea.

“It is,” Ferdinand sighs miserably. “And it’s not as if they don’t understand what we’re trying to do. But a law is a law and God help me if I won’t use it, since apparently they’ll never sign a better one into motion. No matter what the people say, of course.”

“To be fair, I think that might be a bit our fault,” Lorenz says. Ferdinand laughs. This time its a little lower — a little more honest of a sound.

“Yes,” he agrees, puffing a breath across the mouth of his mug. “A bit, at least. Heaven help us.” Their fathers had always been the most steadfast opponents of any legislation that dared contend even the slightest hint of equality with regards to matrimony, after all, and Lorenz isn’t stupid enough to think that Count Gloucester hadn’t been picturing his disgraced son when he cast his votes. “No matter. There is our story. But goodness. You must tell me about _you_. I see your face positively everywhere and to everyone I say here is my finest friend. Living a grand life in the big city — I am positively _beside_ myself with jealousy.”

Here is Ferdinand’s famous diplomacy at work again. Lorenz smiles all the same and sips at his mug.

“I suppose I manage.”

“Well, you do so with a fantastic panache,” Ferdinand promises. “As has always been your trademark. Still, Lorenz. Modeling. I find it all so delightful. Do tell what you have on your agenda. No doubt we’ll see you gracing billboards soon.”

 _Not quite_ , Lorenz could simper. He could tell him other things, too. _I think I might have finally grown up,_ he could admit. Out of everyone he knows, Ferdinand would be the only one to understand what he means. _I think I might be moving on. If I’m very, very careful, I might even be alright._

“I’ll show you,” is what he says instead, borrowing one of Claude’s sly grins as he peeks at both of them through chamomile-scented steam.

* * *

They manage it: through sleepless nights and blur-eyed days and broken sewing machines replaced by aching hands; and borrowed grannies arriving in the eleventh hour to lay eyelash lace and finish off hems; and in spite of two break-down fits by Hilda and one, more quiet, by Marianne. In sixteen days they build a thirty-two piece collection. On the seventeenth they cram it into a fleet of rented vans and carry them — shimmering, like angelic bodies brandished in some strange funeral parade — into a cordoned off spot in the guts of the Royal Theatre-turned-Fashion Week main stage. 

The six of them — Claude, Lorenz, Hilda and Marianne, and Ignatz and Dedue, an honorary designer after everything he’s offered them in the past two weeks — are responsible for bringing it all to the venue, but only Claude and Lorenz remain after the rest peel off to return the vans. They linger on the loading dock, their breath freezing in the air as they watch others like them scurry around in the dark. It’s too early to even call it morning, really. Everyone else is clutching steaming cups of coffee but it’s been two days since they’ve done anything other than cat-nap, and Lorenz is at the point where he’s suddenly feeling rested again. He knows it’s just exhaustion, but for once he’s grateful for it. It makes him feel a little numb as well — calm, when he should be full of nerves. Thank goodness for that.

Claude hums. Lorenz looks over to catch him waving a little notebook at him that he always keeps shoved in his coat pocket.

“I’ve finished it,” Claude tells him unceremoniously, like he’s just conquered the daily crossword in the Fhirdiad Times. “The line-up.” A surprised laugh tangles in Lorenz’s throat.

“You’ve _just_ _finished_ it?”

“Sure,” Claude says with a shrug. He hands the notebook to him. The pages are soft and bend easily beneath Lorenz’s fingers. He knows it’s because Claude’s always kneading and folding the ratty old thing. This is something else Lorenz has learned in this short time they’ve shared together: he fidgets. Rolls his knuckles together to spin the rings around his fingers, or tugs at the one pierced through the lobe of his ear, or tears tiny pieces from discarded sketches until it looks like he’s broken a set of snow globes at his desk. He’s like a shark. If he ever stops moving he’ll drown.

“Claude,” Lorenz groans when he spots his name at the end of the scribbled list. “No.”

“What?” Claude grins, guilty, like a little boy with stolen chocolate smeared on his cheeks. Lorenz isn’t sure if he should kiss him or hit him with his stupid notebook.

“You can’t close a show with a menswear look.”

“Sure I can,” Claude contends. He pauses to watch a stagehand roll a pair of speakers by them before he inches a little closer.

“No,” Lorenz scolds him. It’s as much to stop him from luring him into a pacifying hug as it is for anything else. “You made a fucking wedding gown. Use that one.” Claude’s brows raise. “ _What_ ,” Lorenz huffs, nearly an afterthought. He crosses his arms for good measure.

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say _fucking_ before.”

“That isn’t the point,” Lorenz sniffs. His voice is nearly swallowed up by Claude’s laughter. “And this isn’t funny. Do the gown.”

“Say it again.” Of course he isn’t listening. Lorenz bristles, but Claude still manages to finally catch him between his arms.

“Absolutely not,” Lorenz mutters. Claude squeezes him a little tighter.

“It’s what I want,” Claude replies finally after a second spent listening to the low roar of a passing truck. “I’m allowed to be selfish.”

He makes everything sound so easy. Lorenz’d found that insufferable, once. Now he’s gotten a little better at interpreting what it really means. So instead of tossing himself in front of the unstoppable train of Claude’s conviction he buries his nose into the crook of his neck instead, nudging past the cashmere of his scarf to press his cheek against his pulse. It’s hammering at a thousand miles per hour.

“Fine,” Lorenz relents finally, stringing his arms around his shoulders. “Be selfish.”

And it’s a funny word, _selfish_. But what’s so bad about being self interested? Maybe his parents thought he was selfish, too, but selflessness in Gloucester was suffocation for a man like him. So let them both be a little selfish, he decides. God knows they’ve paid for it.

* * *

Claude’s first collection was a celebration of nature — lush, verdant, full of life, just like the botanical garden that had been his atelier. His second, unsurprisingly, is a bonfire. It starts off in dark tones draped in rich wools which lay statuesque on the shoulders of CVR’s fledgling models as they begin their journey down the catwalk. As the show advances the first embers appear in quick glimpses of shimmering silks. They aren’t cast in predictable reds and yellows but rather in an iridescent palette that glows under the lights. 

No matter the collection, Claude has a way with playing with shapes. His skill is on full show now. A pair of suits on Dedue’s broad-shouldered cousins turns suddenly feminine with the graceful line of their tailoring; and then a leggy woman — Julana, from Morfis, and heir to the Warehouse District’s lost coffee shop — strides down the stage next in a sharp-edged dress that looks like twenty-third century armor. A murmur rises in the crowd as each look sheds more of its darkness and is transformed into light. They hold their breath when Petra arrives dressed in the wedding gown, a feat of pearlescent jacquard that is, quite frankly, a triumph.

Lorenz watches it all happen with his heart in his throat from backstage. Marianne and Hilda flutter around him, making the final reckless adjustments to his look as the collection is unfurled across the catwalk. He should be proud of the models’ haughty strides, he thinks; of all of the hours he’d spent piecing together the shapes of their outfits under Marianne’s mute guidance. He should be filled to the brim with the monumental rush of having finally _arrived_. His whole life he’s been chasing after success and here it is, and his mind can’t think of fucking _anything_ — just snow on an empty television channel and a pinch as he picks at the cuticle of his left thumb.

“Alright,” Hilda tells him, her voice brassy in his ear. For a second he gapes at her in confusion until he understands just what she means. He takes a step forward and nearly trips over a coiled wire. Marianne looks like she’s about to faint. Another step. A hundred voices begin to shout inside his head, calling out _turn back! You can’t do this! Turn back!_

He takes a third step and feels the heat of the stage lights on his face. Step four and he feels it sparking him alight. Step five and he’s on fire. He feels it spread along his spine, devouring with indiscretion all of the ugly things he’s been hoarding for years: his father’s anger, his mother’s fear, their weakness in chasing him out. He realizes that this is what Claude must have been feeling the morning after the fire— an indescribable euphoria that comes when destruction gives life to something else. _Fuck you_ , Lorenz wants to shout on his behalf when he makes it to closer to the end of the stage; _I’m alive!_

It takes two seconds and a thousand years. He blinks and he’s behind the stage again, nearly blinded by the dark. Some part of him understands that he needs to follow the final line-up back out onto the catwalk, but he’s still swallowed up in the rush of everything that’s happened. A set of fingers thread themselves between his own. He lets them lead him forward. There’s a roar so loud in his head that he can’t quite hear his own thoughts. _Applause_ , he realizes finally; a hundred different cries and hurrahs. He feels like he’s floating — like he’s the ghostly smoke of the silk chiffon cape of his jacket which had a minute earlier unfurled, majestic, like a long train in his wake.

Lorenz peers dreamily through the haze of the lights as they advance. His stoic mask falters when he spots Dorothea first, a blur of curls as she leaps and points and claps when he whisks past. Lysithea and Cyril are beside her, and nearly swallowed up by the bustle of a dozen other familiar faces from the Warehouse District all looking out of place next to the over-styled editors and socialites crammed at their elbows, and despite the fact that they deserve their seats more than anyone else. Three paces more brings the red blur of Ferdinand and the black splotch of Hubert beside him.

Then Lorenz is blinded by flashbulbs again, but this time it doesn’t matter. He knows where he is and where he’s going. He squeezes Claude’s fingers tighter. When they make it to the end of the catwalk he turns and kisses him, and not for the last time.

**Author's Note:**

> Please come say hello [@fouxdogue!](https://twitter.com/fouxdogue)


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